Chapter Five: "Through the Asteroid Field"
Celestra's hair was still soaking wet and hanging in tendrils about her pale-complected face when someone with the Great Fox rapped on her bedroom door. Wearing only a large fluffy towel and dripping water along the carpet, the Macbethian assassin made her way to the door, yanking it open roughly and finding herself face-to-face with Falco Lombardi. To his credit, Falco did well to keep his eyes locked fautlessly with hers, and Celestra found herself wondering how strong the avian's willpower truly was.
"Pepper's giving us a new assignment in fifteen minutes," Falco began shortly, folding his arms across his green flight jacket in what Celestra felt sure was a defensive posture.
"If it's anything as ridiculous as the first, I'll be sure not to hold my breath," Celestra retorted, turning away from the door but leaving it open. If she had read Falco correctly during their initial meeting, he had a short fuse, and this encounter might prove highly amusing.
Never missing a beat, Falco stepped in after her, casting a passive gaze over her room. "How so? Bit difficult for you?"
"Quite the contrary, no, Lombardi. I found it boring and rather distracting, considering I now have four bickering male mercenaries to babysit. That's not precisely my idea of a good time." She was combing her hair out now, keeping half an eye on Falco through the mirror mounted on her wall.
Falco tried his utmost to remain composed, but the proud side of him was truly stung by her reference of 'babysitting' him and his teammates. Leaning casually against the wall, staring right back into Celestra's reflection, he asked, "Is the concept of friendship that difficult for you to grasp, or is it your lack of first-hand experience?"
Knowing full well that he expected her to deny the claim, she said, more to deflate his ego, "Lack of first-hand experience. You learn not to waste your time on such foolish emotions when you're doing real work."
"Define 'real work' for me," Falco shot back, feeling his face heating up substantially. "Do you call killing from shadows real, noble work? At least some of us fight with some semblance of honor."
Suddenly Celestra's eyes flashed, and in a movement too fast for Falco to see she had spun around and flung one of her switchblades through the air; it spun end-over-end until it thudded into the wall, embedded up to the hilt millimeters from Falco's face. She strode the length of the room, face livid, and grabbed the avian's shoulders, slamming him back against the wall.
"Honor?" she began, her voice sharp and icy. "You want to talk about honor? Okay, then, Lombardi, I'll play along. Is it honorable to brainwash decent people who have never committed a crime in their lives? Is it honorable to shoot children at point-blank range? Is it honorable to tear apart families when they never wanted anything to do with Venom or Andross or war?"
Falco swallowed hard despite himself. "N-No," he stammered. "It's not."
"Then don't preach to me about honor," Celestra finished quietly, releasing him with an almost saddened look in her eyes. "Maybe you and your friends are convinced that you're the only ones fighting for a noble cause, but there are some people who have seen all these things first-hand and have been forever changed." She looked him full in the eyes, and he gasped softly at the intense regret and sadness within her gaze. "We have learned the hard way that there is no honor."
He stood there staring at her, positively dumbfounded, even as she departed to dress. When she returned, he hadn't moved, and when she left her room for mission control, Falco was still staring into space as though he was seeing Celestra's view of the world for the first time.
And suddenly it wasn't so radical.
~~*~~
General Pepper was talking idly with Fox, Peppy, and Slippy when Celestra strode into the briefing room, seating herself at the windowsill again. The general's eyes twinkled at her when he said, "Unorthodox, I must admit, but I have come to accept your eccentric tactics over the years, Marquette, and therefore offer my most sincere congratulations and thanks."
Celestra came forward and dipped into a low, generous bow, then returned to the sill without a word just as Falco entered the briefing room, seating himself wordlessly beside Slippy and keeping his focus on Pepper. "For your unfaltering service, Marquette, I grant you news," the general continued. "A message from Bill Grey, your colleague." The screen dimmed for a moment, then Bill's happy face materialized in Pepper's place.
"Hey, Marquette!" he called, and the assassin's eyes sparkled with a luster the likes of which the mercenaries had never seen. "A load of G-Diffuser frequencies got scrambled after your little escapade at Metgiacon, yours included, but thankfully enough I got ahold of Pepper and he forwarded my message. Corneria's radar screens are clearer than they've been in ages; you lot did a bang-up job! As for me, I'm at the Katinan frontline base preparin' defense patterns and such. General Pepper will be glad to know that his cross-space lieutenants are rallyin' to hold off Andross and aid in the war any way we can. As always, a few days is far too long to be without you, Marquette--hope to see you soon! Bill Grey, out."
With a hearty salute, the male assassin faded, only to be replaced by the general moments later.
"As for your lot, McCloud," Pepper continued gaily, "I am in your debt for sparing my life and my base. It is with great pleasure that I reward you full ownership of the Great Fox itself, and may it serve you well."
Slippy and Falco exchanged an exuberant high-five as Fox sputtered out a few words of thanks.
"Now, for your next mission, I can assure you that there will be no need to split yourselves up," he continued, drawing back everyone's attention. "In two days the Cornerian fleet will be joining with a smaller squadron from Katina. To complete the rendezvous, we will have to fight our way through Sector Y combat zone; the leader of Katinan forces, Captain Gilraen Anilora, fears ambush of his smaller force and has asked for assistance."
"Us, you mean," Peppy reasoned.
Pepper nodded. "Captain Anilora has been casually acquainted with Fox before, and I daresay you know him well enough, Celestra?"
The mercenaries all looked curiously to the assassin, who ignored all of them and focused solely on Pepper. "Yes, sir, I know Gilraen well enough." It seemed from Fox and Peppy's vantage point that a faint tinge of crimson had appered in Celestra's cheeks.
"Tell Anilora he can count on us," Fox answered briskly, rubbing his hands together. "We just need a route that will get us there in time."
"What if we cut through the asteriod field?" Peppy reasoned, leaning forward in his chair. "We could meet him on the northwestern side of Meteo in a day and a half if we make good time."
Fox swiveled in his chair to regard his other two teammates. "You guys good with that?"
"We're good," Falco affirmed. Slippy nodded.
"What about you?" Fox continued, turning to Celestra at the back of the room. "Are you in?"
The assassin smiled mysteriously at the prospect of more battle and idly twirled a butterfly knife with the nimble fingers of her left hand. Fox assumed that was as good of an answer as he could hope for from her and nodded to the general. "Mission accepted. We'll make out way through the asteroid field and escort Anilora to you via Sector Y."
"Very good," said Pepper. "When can you depart?"
"Immediately," Celestra offered, and for once the other agreed.
"Excellent. Aronius Pepper, over and out."
~~*~~
In twenty minutes or so the five space pilots had departed the celestial majesty that was their new cruiser. Peppy and Slippy circled the rear of Great Fox, alert for an ambush from behind, while Falco rotated between flanks, fanning out far to the sides and providing a ful perspective to the team. Fox led the procession into the outer rim of the asteroid field, and Celestra, far too restless for the mercenaries' cautious approach, had already sped off far ahead; Rage of Macbeth was nowhere in sight. Slippy had already distributed various maps to Fox's computer, detailing the safest and most direct route through Meteo, and ROB constantly ran diagnostics on the five Arwings, ensuring that each craft was in top working order.
"Once we make it through the outer rim, we should be clear for at least a few hours," Fox observed, studying his computer screen and announcing his findings over an open radio channel.
"We can follow the rim for the first day," Slippy added, "but for the last twelve hours we'll have to be on alert as we manuever through the center."
Peppy stayed silent, letting his gaze drift ahead in hopes of seeing Celestra's ship. "Hey, ROB--is there a transponder in Rage of Macbeth?"
The AI summoned a skematic of Celestra's Arwing and perused the mainframe. "Affirmative," he replied in a drone. "She is roughly two miles to our immediate west. I will keep an eye on her."
Falco sighed in disgust. "Who's babysitting now?" he muttered to himself.
"At least the lot of you are good entertainment," came Celestra's voice over the intercom. "I didn't know you were such an active comedian, Lombardi."
Slippy snickered; Falco cursed under his breath.
"Anything interesting up there, Marquette?" Fox called, drawing away from the cruiser a bit and broadening his frontal viewpoint.
A couple of miles ahead, the assassin guided her spacecraft through a more concentrated field of free-flying rock. "Unless you're really into enormous brown rocks, then no, nothing at all."
"Be sure to keep this channel open," Fox reminded, then everyone fell silent and settled into a comfortable scouting routine.
After three uneventful hours of penetrating the outer ring of Meteo, the Star Fox team had boarded their cruiser again, leaving ROB and Slippy to keep a lookout. In another fifty minutes Celestra had also returned, proceeding straight to her private quarters. After many fruitless minutes of attempting contact with Bill, the girl fell into a light sleep, door locked and inter-ship communications shut down. Ironically enough, Bill himself had struggled with his own transmitters earlier that hour, and had likewise given up in a foul mood.
Fox and Peppy conversed again with General Pepper, informing him that they were on schedule.
And all the while Falco stood motionlessly before one of the great windows of the cruiser, rolling Celestra's words over in his mind and finding that he hated the assassin all the more for the truth behind them.
~~*~~
Celestra was jolted awake very suddenly perhaps an hour or so later. Her keen eyes flitted back and forth all around the room, making certain that all of her possessions were still where she had left them, then slowly rose, moving to the nearest wall and leaning against it. For several uneasy moments, all was silent, but then she felt the subtle vibrations coming from outside the ship.
Great Fox was under attack.
Throwing a flight vest haphazardly across her shoulders, Celestra quickly stepped into her magical boots and clamped out the door, jogging the length of the ship to the main tactics room where ROB, Slippy, and Peppy were all bustling about.
"Guess I don't have to tell you guys that we're being shot at," Celestra offered dryly, crossing to stand at Peppy's side near a holo-vidscreen that displayed the situation outside.
"It just started a minute or so ago," the hare explained, seemingly not bothered by the ordeal. "A dozen class D Venomian craft are attacking the rear left section of the cruiser."
"A distraction?" Slippy asked, accompanying ROB at the mainframe.
Celestra tapped the toe of one boot several times merely for her own mirth. "Most likely." Then, over her shoulder to ROB, she continued, "Open the hangar for me. I'll fly out and take care of them."
Peppy placed a hand on her forearm as she moved for the door. "And if it is an ambush?" he pressed.
The assassin shook his hand away none too gently. "I think I can handle some class D pushovers, old man," she snapped, then she turned on her heel and strode away. Peppy sighed, pained by her words, and turned to help Slippy at the helm.
"It's a trap," Fox claimed bluntly as he strode into the tactics room a few minutes later and moved behind Peppy to watch Celestra's progress. With a little sigh, the hare nodded his agreement.
"Wouldn't she be smart enough to know that?" Slippy reasoned.
"That depends," Falco cut in, stretching and yawning as he joined his companions. "Me, I think she's been hit in the head a few times during the last six years." He, Fox, and Slippy had a laugh at that until Peppy cut them short with a scowl. The avian turned away, still chuckling softly, and nipped at the feathers of his right shoulder.
"Guess we'll find out."
~~*~~
Celestra, being Pepper's most prized assassin, had already deduced that she was being set up. Class D Venomians were small craft with far too little shield energy to protect themselves from Rage of Macbeth's advanced laser technology, so it only made sense that they were only there as bait. She took a roundabout way to her enemies, just to see if the ambush was lying in wait on the cruiser's other side, then charged in from below, firing at the engines from her advantageous angle. As she had expected, the formation scattered and fanned out, working to lead her away from Great Fox. Deciding to play along, the assassin gave chase, pursuing them into a nearby cluster of asteroids and taking them out while they had their backs turned.
"She's walking right into a trap, and she knows it," Fox observed, noting the assassin's movements and marking them as defensive. "This is the first noble thing she's done--she purposely drove them away from us."
"That doesn't mean anything," Falco protested. "She probably just didn't want to risk helping them tear her mode of transportation apart." When he had finished, no one seemed convinced by that statement, and Falco found that he didn't believe it either.
Just as Celestra had successfully eliminated the last of them, a brilliant white flash illuminated the entire area in a radius of five miles, causing the Star Fox team to dive to the floor, shielding thier eyes, and Celestra to cry out in pain and fierce denial. None of them saw the twenty or so class B Hybrid stealth crafts emerge from behind various chunks of rock.
Fox was the first to regain his vision, and he raggedly drug himself level with the holographic screen. After several seconds of squinting he cried, "Hybrids! ROB, prep our Arwings, Marquette is flying blind!"
"Working," came ROB's voice from somewhere left of Fox as the others struggled to their feet. "All craft ready for deployment, Fox."
Fox pounded off down the hall, boarding his Arwing and ejecting from the hangar before his teammates had even realized where he'd gone.
Meanwhile, Celestra buried her head in her flight jacket, tears of intense pain welling in her eyes as she let loose her first bomb. It shot through the air, detonating and incinerating half of the Hybrids before Fox had even arrived. Just as the assassin had regained her eyesight completely, the pair of them had taken out the rest of the would-be ambush.
"You're not half-bad, McCloud," Celestra offered as she and Fox docked and were making their way back to the tactics room.
"I was just the first guy to regain visuals," Fox assured.
Celestra stopped dead in the hallway, forcing Fox to do the same. "Who are you trying to kid? Those guys wouldn't come after me for all the money in Lylat, and you know it."
"Marquette, listen--"
"Quit making excuses, McCloud," she cut him off, hands defensively on her hips. "This is all my doing, and that's okay. The truth is that I don't want your friendships or your alliances because I learned when I was a kid that the more ties you have, the more vulnerable you really are. As soon as we're finished, I'm gone, paycheck and all, and you'll never see me again. I daresay we'll all be better off for it."
The mercenary balled his hands into fists to keep them from shaking in anger. "I risked my neck to help you out, only to find that you couldn't care less?! Tell me all this junk beforehand next time, so I don't waste my time or my energy."
"Here's your last warning: stay out of my way," Celestra ordered menacingly, icy eyes ablaze. "It's like I told Falco--maybe you guys think you're saving the day, but I now that honor is just a figment of the imagination. After every devastation there's just a bigger one, so try not to get your hopes set on killing Andross. There will always be another guys just waiting to take his place." She backed up a step, gaze once again more soft, and she whispered to the floor, "Believe me. I know." With that, the assassin turned and headed off down the hallway to her living quarters, leaving Fox more confused than angry.
None of them saw her again until they met up with Captain Anilora's squadron, led by the Katinan cruiser, Whitewater.
Celestra's hair was still soaking wet and hanging in tendrils about her pale-complected face when someone with the Great Fox rapped on her bedroom door. Wearing only a large fluffy towel and dripping water along the carpet, the Macbethian assassin made her way to the door, yanking it open roughly and finding herself face-to-face with Falco Lombardi. To his credit, Falco did well to keep his eyes locked fautlessly with hers, and Celestra found herself wondering how strong the avian's willpower truly was.
"Pepper's giving us a new assignment in fifteen minutes," Falco began shortly, folding his arms across his green flight jacket in what Celestra felt sure was a defensive posture.
"If it's anything as ridiculous as the first, I'll be sure not to hold my breath," Celestra retorted, turning away from the door but leaving it open. If she had read Falco correctly during their initial meeting, he had a short fuse, and this encounter might prove highly amusing.
Never missing a beat, Falco stepped in after her, casting a passive gaze over her room. "How so? Bit difficult for you?"
"Quite the contrary, no, Lombardi. I found it boring and rather distracting, considering I now have four bickering male mercenaries to babysit. That's not precisely my idea of a good time." She was combing her hair out now, keeping half an eye on Falco through the mirror mounted on her wall.
Falco tried his utmost to remain composed, but the proud side of him was truly stung by her reference of 'babysitting' him and his teammates. Leaning casually against the wall, staring right back into Celestra's reflection, he asked, "Is the concept of friendship that difficult for you to grasp, or is it your lack of first-hand experience?"
Knowing full well that he expected her to deny the claim, she said, more to deflate his ego, "Lack of first-hand experience. You learn not to waste your time on such foolish emotions when you're doing real work."
"Define 'real work' for me," Falco shot back, feeling his face heating up substantially. "Do you call killing from shadows real, noble work? At least some of us fight with some semblance of honor."
Suddenly Celestra's eyes flashed, and in a movement too fast for Falco to see she had spun around and flung one of her switchblades through the air; it spun end-over-end until it thudded into the wall, embedded up to the hilt millimeters from Falco's face. She strode the length of the room, face livid, and grabbed the avian's shoulders, slamming him back against the wall.
"Honor?" she began, her voice sharp and icy. "You want to talk about honor? Okay, then, Lombardi, I'll play along. Is it honorable to brainwash decent people who have never committed a crime in their lives? Is it honorable to shoot children at point-blank range? Is it honorable to tear apart families when they never wanted anything to do with Venom or Andross or war?"
Falco swallowed hard despite himself. "N-No," he stammered. "It's not."
"Then don't preach to me about honor," Celestra finished quietly, releasing him with an almost saddened look in her eyes. "Maybe you and your friends are convinced that you're the only ones fighting for a noble cause, but there are some people who have seen all these things first-hand and have been forever changed." She looked him full in the eyes, and he gasped softly at the intense regret and sadness within her gaze. "We have learned the hard way that there is no honor."
He stood there staring at her, positively dumbfounded, even as she departed to dress. When she returned, he hadn't moved, and when she left her room for mission control, Falco was still staring into space as though he was seeing Celestra's view of the world for the first time.
And suddenly it wasn't so radical.
~~*~~
General Pepper was talking idly with Fox, Peppy, and Slippy when Celestra strode into the briefing room, seating herself at the windowsill again. The general's eyes twinkled at her when he said, "Unorthodox, I must admit, but I have come to accept your eccentric tactics over the years, Marquette, and therefore offer my most sincere congratulations and thanks."
Celestra came forward and dipped into a low, generous bow, then returned to the sill without a word just as Falco entered the briefing room, seating himself wordlessly beside Slippy and keeping his focus on Pepper. "For your unfaltering service, Marquette, I grant you news," the general continued. "A message from Bill Grey, your colleague." The screen dimmed for a moment, then Bill's happy face materialized in Pepper's place.
"Hey, Marquette!" he called, and the assassin's eyes sparkled with a luster the likes of which the mercenaries had never seen. "A load of G-Diffuser frequencies got scrambled after your little escapade at Metgiacon, yours included, but thankfully enough I got ahold of Pepper and he forwarded my message. Corneria's radar screens are clearer than they've been in ages; you lot did a bang-up job! As for me, I'm at the Katinan frontline base preparin' defense patterns and such. General Pepper will be glad to know that his cross-space lieutenants are rallyin' to hold off Andross and aid in the war any way we can. As always, a few days is far too long to be without you, Marquette--hope to see you soon! Bill Grey, out."
With a hearty salute, the male assassin faded, only to be replaced by the general moments later.
"As for your lot, McCloud," Pepper continued gaily, "I am in your debt for sparing my life and my base. It is with great pleasure that I reward you full ownership of the Great Fox itself, and may it serve you well."
Slippy and Falco exchanged an exuberant high-five as Fox sputtered out a few words of thanks.
"Now, for your next mission, I can assure you that there will be no need to split yourselves up," he continued, drawing back everyone's attention. "In two days the Cornerian fleet will be joining with a smaller squadron from Katina. To complete the rendezvous, we will have to fight our way through Sector Y combat zone; the leader of Katinan forces, Captain Gilraen Anilora, fears ambush of his smaller force and has asked for assistance."
"Us, you mean," Peppy reasoned.
Pepper nodded. "Captain Anilora has been casually acquainted with Fox before, and I daresay you know him well enough, Celestra?"
The mercenaries all looked curiously to the assassin, who ignored all of them and focused solely on Pepper. "Yes, sir, I know Gilraen well enough." It seemed from Fox and Peppy's vantage point that a faint tinge of crimson had appered in Celestra's cheeks.
"Tell Anilora he can count on us," Fox answered briskly, rubbing his hands together. "We just need a route that will get us there in time."
"What if we cut through the asteriod field?" Peppy reasoned, leaning forward in his chair. "We could meet him on the northwestern side of Meteo in a day and a half if we make good time."
Fox swiveled in his chair to regard his other two teammates. "You guys good with that?"
"We're good," Falco affirmed. Slippy nodded.
"What about you?" Fox continued, turning to Celestra at the back of the room. "Are you in?"
The assassin smiled mysteriously at the prospect of more battle and idly twirled a butterfly knife with the nimble fingers of her left hand. Fox assumed that was as good of an answer as he could hope for from her and nodded to the general. "Mission accepted. We'll make out way through the asteroid field and escort Anilora to you via Sector Y."
"Very good," said Pepper. "When can you depart?"
"Immediately," Celestra offered, and for once the other agreed.
"Excellent. Aronius Pepper, over and out."
~~*~~
In twenty minutes or so the five space pilots had departed the celestial majesty that was their new cruiser. Peppy and Slippy circled the rear of Great Fox, alert for an ambush from behind, while Falco rotated between flanks, fanning out far to the sides and providing a ful perspective to the team. Fox led the procession into the outer rim of the asteroid field, and Celestra, far too restless for the mercenaries' cautious approach, had already sped off far ahead; Rage of Macbeth was nowhere in sight. Slippy had already distributed various maps to Fox's computer, detailing the safest and most direct route through Meteo, and ROB constantly ran diagnostics on the five Arwings, ensuring that each craft was in top working order.
"Once we make it through the outer rim, we should be clear for at least a few hours," Fox observed, studying his computer screen and announcing his findings over an open radio channel.
"We can follow the rim for the first day," Slippy added, "but for the last twelve hours we'll have to be on alert as we manuever through the center."
Peppy stayed silent, letting his gaze drift ahead in hopes of seeing Celestra's ship. "Hey, ROB--is there a transponder in Rage of Macbeth?"
The AI summoned a skematic of Celestra's Arwing and perused the mainframe. "Affirmative," he replied in a drone. "She is roughly two miles to our immediate west. I will keep an eye on her."
Falco sighed in disgust. "Who's babysitting now?" he muttered to himself.
"At least the lot of you are good entertainment," came Celestra's voice over the intercom. "I didn't know you were such an active comedian, Lombardi."
Slippy snickered; Falco cursed under his breath.
"Anything interesting up there, Marquette?" Fox called, drawing away from the cruiser a bit and broadening his frontal viewpoint.
A couple of miles ahead, the assassin guided her spacecraft through a more concentrated field of free-flying rock. "Unless you're really into enormous brown rocks, then no, nothing at all."
"Be sure to keep this channel open," Fox reminded, then everyone fell silent and settled into a comfortable scouting routine.
After three uneventful hours of penetrating the outer ring of Meteo, the Star Fox team had boarded their cruiser again, leaving ROB and Slippy to keep a lookout. In another fifty minutes Celestra had also returned, proceeding straight to her private quarters. After many fruitless minutes of attempting contact with Bill, the girl fell into a light sleep, door locked and inter-ship communications shut down. Ironically enough, Bill himself had struggled with his own transmitters earlier that hour, and had likewise given up in a foul mood.
Fox and Peppy conversed again with General Pepper, informing him that they were on schedule.
And all the while Falco stood motionlessly before one of the great windows of the cruiser, rolling Celestra's words over in his mind and finding that he hated the assassin all the more for the truth behind them.
~~*~~
Celestra was jolted awake very suddenly perhaps an hour or so later. Her keen eyes flitted back and forth all around the room, making certain that all of her possessions were still where she had left them, then slowly rose, moving to the nearest wall and leaning against it. For several uneasy moments, all was silent, but then she felt the subtle vibrations coming from outside the ship.
Great Fox was under attack.
Throwing a flight vest haphazardly across her shoulders, Celestra quickly stepped into her magical boots and clamped out the door, jogging the length of the ship to the main tactics room where ROB, Slippy, and Peppy were all bustling about.
"Guess I don't have to tell you guys that we're being shot at," Celestra offered dryly, crossing to stand at Peppy's side near a holo-vidscreen that displayed the situation outside.
"It just started a minute or so ago," the hare explained, seemingly not bothered by the ordeal. "A dozen class D Venomian craft are attacking the rear left section of the cruiser."
"A distraction?" Slippy asked, accompanying ROB at the mainframe.
Celestra tapped the toe of one boot several times merely for her own mirth. "Most likely." Then, over her shoulder to ROB, she continued, "Open the hangar for me. I'll fly out and take care of them."
Peppy placed a hand on her forearm as she moved for the door. "And if it is an ambush?" he pressed.
The assassin shook his hand away none too gently. "I think I can handle some class D pushovers, old man," she snapped, then she turned on her heel and strode away. Peppy sighed, pained by her words, and turned to help Slippy at the helm.
"It's a trap," Fox claimed bluntly as he strode into the tactics room a few minutes later and moved behind Peppy to watch Celestra's progress. With a little sigh, the hare nodded his agreement.
"Wouldn't she be smart enough to know that?" Slippy reasoned.
"That depends," Falco cut in, stretching and yawning as he joined his companions. "Me, I think she's been hit in the head a few times during the last six years." He, Fox, and Slippy had a laugh at that until Peppy cut them short with a scowl. The avian turned away, still chuckling softly, and nipped at the feathers of his right shoulder.
"Guess we'll find out."
~~*~~
Celestra, being Pepper's most prized assassin, had already deduced that she was being set up. Class D Venomians were small craft with far too little shield energy to protect themselves from Rage of Macbeth's advanced laser technology, so it only made sense that they were only there as bait. She took a roundabout way to her enemies, just to see if the ambush was lying in wait on the cruiser's other side, then charged in from below, firing at the engines from her advantageous angle. As she had expected, the formation scattered and fanned out, working to lead her away from Great Fox. Deciding to play along, the assassin gave chase, pursuing them into a nearby cluster of asteroids and taking them out while they had their backs turned.
"She's walking right into a trap, and she knows it," Fox observed, noting the assassin's movements and marking them as defensive. "This is the first noble thing she's done--she purposely drove them away from us."
"That doesn't mean anything," Falco protested. "She probably just didn't want to risk helping them tear her mode of transportation apart." When he had finished, no one seemed convinced by that statement, and Falco found that he didn't believe it either.
Just as Celestra had successfully eliminated the last of them, a brilliant white flash illuminated the entire area in a radius of five miles, causing the Star Fox team to dive to the floor, shielding thier eyes, and Celestra to cry out in pain and fierce denial. None of them saw the twenty or so class B Hybrid stealth crafts emerge from behind various chunks of rock.
Fox was the first to regain his vision, and he raggedly drug himself level with the holographic screen. After several seconds of squinting he cried, "Hybrids! ROB, prep our Arwings, Marquette is flying blind!"
"Working," came ROB's voice from somewhere left of Fox as the others struggled to their feet. "All craft ready for deployment, Fox."
Fox pounded off down the hall, boarding his Arwing and ejecting from the hangar before his teammates had even realized where he'd gone.
Meanwhile, Celestra buried her head in her flight jacket, tears of intense pain welling in her eyes as she let loose her first bomb. It shot through the air, detonating and incinerating half of the Hybrids before Fox had even arrived. Just as the assassin had regained her eyesight completely, the pair of them had taken out the rest of the would-be ambush.
"You're not half-bad, McCloud," Celestra offered as she and Fox docked and were making their way back to the tactics room.
"I was just the first guy to regain visuals," Fox assured.
Celestra stopped dead in the hallway, forcing Fox to do the same. "Who are you trying to kid? Those guys wouldn't come after me for all the money in Lylat, and you know it."
"Marquette, listen--"
"Quit making excuses, McCloud," she cut him off, hands defensively on her hips. "This is all my doing, and that's okay. The truth is that I don't want your friendships or your alliances because I learned when I was a kid that the more ties you have, the more vulnerable you really are. As soon as we're finished, I'm gone, paycheck and all, and you'll never see me again. I daresay we'll all be better off for it."
The mercenary balled his hands into fists to keep them from shaking in anger. "I risked my neck to help you out, only to find that you couldn't care less?! Tell me all this junk beforehand next time, so I don't waste my time or my energy."
"Here's your last warning: stay out of my way," Celestra ordered menacingly, icy eyes ablaze. "It's like I told Falco--maybe you guys think you're saving the day, but I now that honor is just a figment of the imagination. After every devastation there's just a bigger one, so try not to get your hopes set on killing Andross. There will always be another guys just waiting to take his place." She backed up a step, gaze once again more soft, and she whispered to the floor, "Believe me. I know." With that, the assassin turned and headed off down the hallway to her living quarters, leaving Fox more confused than angry.
None of them saw her again until they met up with Captain Anilora's squadron, led by the Katinan cruiser, Whitewater.