And here's Chapter 6 for those of you who've been keeping track. While a short chapter, it does bring to light somebody rather important to this whole story...
----------


Chapter 6: Enter The Andross
Ah yes, the Lylat system. You thought that exile would simply get rid of me for good, didn't you? Well you're wrong. And that mistake will be your undoing. I will have my revenge. - Andross

The planet Venom was a mostly inhospitable place. Other than around the capitol itself, the planet's atmosphere was thin and hostile to most lifeforms. The lizards that inhabited the planet were mostly resistant to the dangers. There was one terrible plague however, that they were not immune to.
His name was Andross.
Andross was a proud and tall ape, his fur a light gray amongst most of his body. After his exile to the planet Venom roughly two years before, he had used his intelligence and leadership skills to turn this backwater planet into his unstoppable army.
Bent on revenge of the planet Corneria, he marched across the system with his fleet. He took what he wanted, he destroyed what he thought might turn into a threat. What little resistance he met was annihilated. He left the population mostly alone however. In his mind, they would make excellent slaves once he was done.
Now his sights were set on the only planet he hadn't conquered: Corneria.
Andross sat inside his control room, in the middle of the only large city on the planet. The city had a name to the lizards, but he didn't care. He knew his rule was solidified with his intimidating nature, fear, and a large machine he had gotten the lizards to construct as soon as he had risen into power.
The device was what he called a Telekinetic Amplifier. Located in a protected room not too far from where he was, it allowed him to increase his latent mind powers of telepathy and telekinesis to impressive levels, letting him monitor and control minds from across the planet.
He leaned back in his chair, reminiscing on how easy it was to dominate the planet once he realized that his limited powers of mind control worked on the simpleminded lizards. Once he got into power, and had his Telekinetic Amplifier built, the entire planet was ripe for the taking.
Knowing that he had a galaxy to conquer, Andross got back to work. His gaze moved to a multitude of monitors in front of him, each one displaying a video feed of someplace on the planet that was vital to him. It allowed him to easily keep an eye on his workers and adjust them if necessary with his Amplifier. Watching each of the screens in turn, nothing seemed to be amiss, so he moved on to his other problem.
The citizens of the Lylat system were a simple lot, only wanting their peaceful life back. Once he conquered a planet, little was done to anger him, as everyone feared retaliation. One planet however, had continued to resist him: Papetoon.
Andross cursed silently to himself as he thought of that desert planet. Ever since he'd conquered it some time ago, a group of rebels had fought constantly to make life difficult for his gathering parties. Troop transports were consistently damaged, supply convoys had goods stolen from them mid-flight. He had even lost a few ships altogether.
He'd only heard a single name from every craft that had been hit: McCloud. That person had caused nothing but problems for Andross. Everywhere he went, everything he did, it was always stopped by that same name. He had made a guess some time ago that it was the son of the same McCloud who ended up on the wrong end of his final experiment back at his former place of employment - development of a new weapon for the Cornerian Military. He had purposely made sure that the experiment would end in failure, killing the pilot sent to attempt it.
That pilot was James McCloud, father of Fox McCloud. The military was never able to prove that Andross had done it purposely, but they had uncovered enough evidence to show that he was working against the peaceful nature of the planet by developing his own weapons of destruction, so they had exiled him to Venom as permanent punishment.
Fox never knew the exact full story, but he had pieced together enough of the details to make his own assumption.
Andross himself never cared for the details. All he knew was that he was very close to ruling the system himself. It wasn't until today did he learn for sure that Fox was the one who was stopping him on Papetoon.
Sitting on his desk was a small newspaper clipping from one of his spies on the planet, detailing his latest failure - the capture of a certain daughter to acquire an enormous ransom. One of the other passengers onboard that transport had gotten a photo of Fox, showing him near Andross' defeated troops, and sent the picture to the media. He angrily held the clipping in his hands for only a moment before shredding it into tiny bits.
The ape cursed to nobody in particular, his relatively good mood now ruined. His anger quickly intensified when a light on the control panel in front of him lit up, indicating he had a call. He activated his headset with a growl. "What do you want?"
A worried lizard responded on the other end, debating if he should call back at a later time. Unfortunately, his call was expected, so he couldn't skirt his duties. "Sir, this is the battleship Vengeance, reporting in as you requested. We are underway, sir."
Andross smiled, knowing that the end was soon to come to Corneria. "Good. What's your ETA?"
"Two days Venom time, as you requested, sir. If I may ask though, sir, why—"
The lizard was cut off. "No, you may not ask. Just make sure you're ready for combat as soon as you arrive at Corneria."
"Yes, sir."
Andross discontinued the connection as he thought of his strategy. He knew that Corneria had some way of detecting his ship movements, so he planned to let them know he was coming days in advance. He grinned, knowing the panic he would cause. "Only two days until the entire system is mine," he said with a smile.