AN: Thank you to all the readers that are enjoying this story. I've hashed out a draft for the chapters all the way to the ending, so this story will absolutely be completed. Entering the Lylat Wars arc, you'll begin to see familiar scenes from the games with elements from other SF titles and some Halo influence thrown in. All I will say is that this story will be combining elements from the SNES titles, the GC sequels and a bit of originality thrown around to give us a little more worldbuilding. I always intended this fic to be a tribute to the series and all of us who enjoyed the fanart, fanfics and speculation in the Star Fox universe. I hope you enjoy this latest chapter.
Scramble
12:27 Hours, Spring 2nd, 1994 (Local Time) Cornerian Airspace
The starfighter rattled around him as Logan fought the throttle in the launch tunnel. The rebound of the engine's roar against the narrow launch corridor shook the C-16's armored canopy, joined by the noise of the other engines blasting out of the hangar.
He could see a square of blinding white at the end of the tunnel, the open blast doors of the hangar spitting out their team's desperate reinforcements. Fox's ship disappeared into the sky beyond, as did Falco and Slippy in their SFX-01 Arwings, with Fay and Miyu in their X-02 Interceptors charging after them. Team One would have their hands full charging through the thick of the enemy forces, their priority was the Venomian beachhead centered around a large radar contact no CDF recon ship had managed to identify yet.
Logan fought back the trill of fear for his feline girlfriend. He swallowed thickly, reminding himself that she was an excellent pilot, and could hold her own. The nervous jitter in his hands remained.
Team Two, being led by Wolf, was to cut through the residential sections of Corneria City and secure the civilian evacuation routes towards the inland. Both water-bourne and land transports were trying to escape the fighting with what civilians hadn't managed to take refuge in their homes or bomb shelters; A distressing number had already been strafed by Venomian air cover.
Jones shook his head, forcing his worries aside as he concentrated on the illuminated digital guidelines on his HUD, following the flight leader's ship. Wolf had jumped into one of the barebones SFX model Arwings, this one so new it hadn't even had paint applied to the raw alloys of its frame. Fara, flying close by seemingly complimented the rough look with her own orange/black experimental coloring. Flying in sequence behind them, Bill, Katt and himself looked identical in their C-16s devoid of unit colors or markings.
If we survive this maybe a coat of paint is in order, Logan thought offhandedly, If Space Dynamics doesn't mind us shipjacking their property in wartime, that is...
The blinding light of the sky beyond raced closer, and Logan held steady as they thundered out into the blue.
"Team two, with me."
Wolf's order was curt, and the turn he pulled his fighter into moreso. The five ships arced as one over the industrial section of the city, punctuated by columns of acrid smoke trailing from the damage and laser fire joining the flak amid distant ships fighting in the contested airspace. An explosion by a refinery lit up the eastern suburbs, towering up in a brilliant gout of flame.
"Here they come!" Bill's normally genial tone was icy with concentration, as a trio of black dots crested the skyscrapers northwest of their position and began to close in.
"Engage at will," Wolf growled into the comm, "Logan and Katt, stagger your position to mop up at the rear. We're making a clean burn to the overland evac route."
It was risky, pushing through in almost a straight line with the hope that the trailing fighters would catch anything Wolf, Fara and Bill missed; though every second counted when their families could be among the evac transports.
"Katt, I'll hold on the left if you cover the right," Logan keyed briefly to the pink feline's channel.
"You got it sugar," The joking inflection of her words strangely absent. She was likely worried about her bird in Team One.
Up ahead, Wolf and Fara opened fire on the incoming Invader class craft. Brilliant green bolts lanced out and smashed into two of the fighters, which exploded into trailing wreckage to clatter burning along the streets below. Bill's charged shot arced out past the survivor's frenzied return fire and blasted the craft into the side of a highway overpass. Logan inched his finger off his laser trigger, eyes scanning the skyline for any other threats. They survived their first exchange in the air, good.
Several illuminated boxes appeared on his HUD, rangefinder spelling out the distance. A press of a key brought up an enlarged image of a target's silhouette. His eyes widened at the Venomian hovercraft with anti-air turrets tracking them.
"Wolf, we've got mobile SALs crossing the freeways."
"Split off and take them, keep pace with us."
"Copy." "Copy."
Wolf and Fara's Arwings continued to zip deadly laser fire towards the enemy air support, supplemented by Bill now acting as their covering element. It was only now in the field that Logan truly understood how impressive the SFX series was in combat; The maneuverability and raw speed with which Wolf and Fara were able to arc and twist their flight paths among the buildings was breathtaking, a clear difference to the less agile C-16 Bill was piloting as well as he could after them. Watching another Venomian Invader split apart with emerald laser fire, he found himself comparing it to a hawk diving viciously amongst sleepy mice.
An electronic tone blared, and Logan quickly jerked his joystick to the right. A trio of harsh red lasers spit past his canopy, tone blaring as the turret's lock held on him. He lined up the green crosshairs on his HUD with the moving Surface to Air Laser battery, pulling on the trigger. A duo of green lasers smashed into the vehicle's chassis, obscuring the wreckage in a cloud of smoke as the fuel cooked off.
He let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The sensation of narrowly escaping death and then dealing it in an aircraft were not easy to stomach. This was totally different from fighting on the ground.
It's out of your comfort zone, he rationalized as their team flew breakneck speeds through the Cornerian Metropolis, Just focus on supporting them.
He saw Katt dip and strafe a line of Venomian tanks, crowing over the comm as they erupted into shrapnel.
"Watch out boys, this kitty's got claws!"
It made him smile, these Cornerians really had spirit.
Time began to blur. Logan lost track of how far they were flying or for how long. The world became nothing more than the HUD in front of him and the twitch of his fingers laying in controls and adjustments long since burned into his muscle memory through the simulations. A highlighted enemy disappeared in a flurry of green bolts, a jarring impact and static crackle accompanied the glancing blow of an enemy laser, he tilted his wings and slipped through two skyscrapers to escape a trailing Invader-II that clipped it's wing and smashed into the rebar and glass with fire and smoke.
They crested the waterways of the seaport, and Team Two began flying out of the city among the islands dotting the wetlands leading towards the forested interior of the Cornerian province. Down below, they could see craft loading civilians, and the microscopic waving figures cheering them as the last Invader circling above was pulped by a charged shot from Bill's C-16.
"CDF's got incoming air support to cover the evacuation," Wolf growled, "We're heading for the backcountry now."
As the flight leader, O'Donnell was likely on the comm with CDF strategic air command. Flying under the informal designation for the Star Fox team, it was up to him to alert their command as not to get mistaken for enemy air cover; there was simply no time to configure their IFF's.
Sure enough, LADAR showed the motion trackers of two CDF C-16's from the 104th Homeguard arcing over the piers in a holding position. The sight of the families amongst the crowds below now safe fulfilled something in the human's chest.
His alarm blared again, and Logan's eyes snapped to the waterways ahead. "What in the...?" He found himself lost for words.
There was a number of enemy mechs "skiing" across the waves between the little islands of the wetlands. They possessed a cannon on top, but the bizarre design made him do a double take. What kind of lunatic would build this, and...why?
"Ski bots," Fara chimed in over the comm, "Out of the Macbeth shipyards, let's take em down before they reach the transports."
"Fire at will," came Wolf's assent.
The starfighters dipped into an attack run, strafing the ungainly watercraft with a laser barrage. The armor must have been very light, as the "ski bots" quickly folded with a handful of defensive shots fired and then no more than a fiery splash into the waters below.
"Eyes front team, I'm getting intermittent readings in the lowlands ahead." Bill voiced as he brought his fighter through a rocky passage jutting from an island.
Logan glanced at his LADAR and set the range further. Small red dots were winking in and out of existence in the tree and shrub filled valley ahead.
"What is that?" He wondered aloud.
The mystery was solved when Wolf blasted the first ghost contact with his lasers, causing a concussive explosion that threw a shockwave across the valley.
"Mole Missiles!" Fara's voice came in clear, "They only trigger by proximity, your systems won't detect them until it's too late!"
Sure enough, Katt bit back a curse over comm as she whirled her fighter away from a shape that rocketed out of the ground and exploded, pinging her fuselage with debris. "These things really shake you up!"
"Single column, concentrate your fire forward." Wolf's instruction saw the starfighters align together and begin blasting the hidden missiles in a low flying run. If that wasn't enough, the LADAR pinged as new contacts began approaching at a reduced speed.
"Bombers," Wolf growled, "Fara on me, the rest of you target the missiles."
Thus it became a deadly game of trust and target priority; Logan, Bill and Katt worked frantically to blast the transient contacts of the mole missiles, having faith that Wolf and Fara could take out the bombers overhead for them in time. Any hesitation or uncertainty would see them dead.
A column of flame leapt up to the right, and Logan grit his teeth as he felt himself rattled by the concussive force. One of the mole missiles leapt up as Katt drifted too far to one side, and the ensuing explosion caught part of her wing, trailing sparks as the tip and maneuvering flap were torn off.
"Katt, you ok?" Logan keyed her frequency.
"I got a little cooked but I'm ok!" The feline wiggled her flight stick, still in the fight.
The last of the bombers was chased down and destroyed by a vengeful Wolf, and the team reoriented in a flying-V as they flew towards the inland evacuation site.
"Where are all the transports?" Bill asked aloud, "The overland evac vehicles should have come this way."
"If they had time to mine the valley, they must have something nasty waiting up ahead." Fara's voice was firm, the protective streak inside her flaring.
"Switch to all range mode," Wolf spoke after a pause, "Fan out, shields double front."
The "all range mode" was a catch-all term for variable wing geometry craft; fighter pilots would extend/shift their wings for the slower but more maneuverable setting to allow them to make tight turns at lower speeds required for land-based combat. Focusing the shields to the front was hedging their bets for whatever might be ahead now that their ingress point was cleared.
"Contact!" Fara called out over comm, "It's a big one, LADAR's lit up like a supernova!"
A large, angry red dot was inching closer on their scopes. By the rough scan it was several storeys tall. Smoke cresting over the horizon did not bode well. Logan took a deep breath and adjusted his throttle as he crested a tree-lined hill between Katt and Bill.
...and for one horrifying instant, he was back on his homeworld Tribute.
The woodland valley was a conservation reserve in peacetime, with the additional purpose of being a rally point for civilian evacuation by land. Just below the mountain range, the skeletons of several transport ships burned brightly. Scattered about the valley was the scrap and debris of many, many hovercrafts illuminated by the fire and shadowplay amongst their broken frames.
"All those people..." Katt's voice wavered, and trailed off into silence. There were no words for this.
Logan felt bile rise in his throat. It had been years, but this was right out of his nightmares. Any of the civilians that had tried to evacuate to this refuge had been killed, just like so many humans in the war against the Covenant. Nameless, faceless statistics ground down in a war they wanted no part in.
Standing tall above the chaos, a bipedal mech slowly turned to face the intruding aircraft. The heavily armored torso sported arms linked with dual missile launchers, and optical sensors with some sort of launch tube in the head. A large heatsink clung like a backpack, while the narrow legs articulated smoothly as they rotated to face the threat. The hand painted 'A' denoted the construct's obvious allegiance.
"Ahhh...so this is Star Fox?" came a smug voice across the open comm.
A professional soldier might have been able to remain calm, and face the enemy objectively. Certainly, the CDF home guard were doing so to the best of their ability with their friends and families among the casualties mounting by the hour; but the team was young, and the sight of such a slaughter with no tactical reason was wrong.
Wolf ripped his throttle back and overloaded his laser heatsinks in one screaming barrage. Hot on his heels, the others rocketed in firing with everything they had.
Logan clenched his trigger with white-knuckle fury. He could see his shots splashing harmlessly against the heavy armor of the mech, stitching lines searching for some weak point. The world became a blurry tunnel focused only on the scumbag that killed the helpless evacuees.
He did not see the missile launcher tracking him until it fired less than a hundred meters away.
Logan was smashed into the back of his seat, harness groaning as the world spun. He became aware of a burnt smell, and noise so much noise filling his ears with electronic alarms and the twisting of burning metal.
Think! Think!
He shook his head, fighting to stay conscious. A blurry glance at the HUD showed him the conical front of his craft had taken the blast, and the ship was now hurtling towards the mountain range with most of the avionics completely gone. The engine was still firing, though the unresponsive controls left him in a very slight spin.
"Logan here," he spat through a mouthful of blood, "Going down...just below the mountains."
He scrabbled for the emergency eject, gripped it above his head, and pulled.
Explosive bolts, blinding sunlight, a torrent of wind and then silence.
He tried to shake off his daze, feeling the harness bite into him as his ejector seat arced through the air, before the small gyro jets began to slow his descent. He watched the ruin of his starfighter crash smoking into the side of a boulder, adding yet another broken hulk to the tragedy on this field.
Grasping about blindly, he could not find his rifle stowed with the seat. He turned his head as much as he could to watch the Arwings and C-16's strafing the mech like angry bees, lasers splashing harmlessly.
How do we kill this thing?
Fox McCloud twitched his paw ever so slightly, adjusting his wings to skim within ten meters of an adjacent building. A twitch of his trigger finger brought a precise laser bolt into a tank that was trying to scurry away up ahead. The skyline was whipping by at a blinding pace, afterburners on full as Team One cut right through the heart of the enemy forces. Flying in a delta formation, Falco, Slippy, Fay and Miyu were likewise flexing their talent in the air, with every downed Invader craft buying them more time and lives saved.
It had been a shaky decision to split the gang up in this way, but Falco and Slippy had the practice with him and their tactics, and they needed Fay and Miyu in their interceptor roles to expand their effective range in what was a defensive action caught flat-footed; The sooner they could rip into the enemy beachhead and break their line, the better. That left Wolf delegated as the Team Two leader, and the others with him to protect civilian evacuation. Realistically, the others didn't have the same level of skill in the air, and even as their friend he had to make a practical choice.
"Something's wrong with the G-Diffuser..." Falco was swearing over the comm, afterburner flickering. Fox frowned, just knowing that the avian had overlooked the hurried pre-flight checks again.
"Lock it down Falco," He spoke calmly, turning his eyes to the LADAR, "Slippy, dial up and get me a reading on that transient contact 20 klicks out." Another Venomian fighter burst into fire as he streamed past.
The Arwings and Interceptors were ripping through the Venomian lines in a direct path towards their beachhead. Enemy chatter began to key in with frantic calls begging for support. Miyu and Fay converged in an attack run, peppering a tread-bearing 'Garuda' mech with claws until it keeled over and burst into a column of black smoke. The building it had been savaging teetered, but did not collapse.
"Garuda down," Miyu's vicious grin could be heard through the comm. A gout of fire erupted along an overpass as Fay stitched lines of green lasers across a tank column, "Ditto for the armored units!"
Fox smiled, even as he swung his Arwing into a pursuit angle to pick off the three Granga fighters chasing Falco and his malfunctioning G-Diffuser. They were making good time, and so far without a scratch. As the formation flew along the northern beaches, they dodged a few ambitious Invader-II's by slipping through the natural overhangs in the rock.
"How's that reading Slip?" McCloud queried.
"Looks like a gang of bombers laid up in the lowlands ahead, some anti-air missiles in the dip, and an Attack Carrier sitting just outside the flak cannon's range!" The toad copied his reading as a still image and linked it up with his wingmates, showing the last known position of the enemy contacts.
There it is, thought the vulpine leader, that's the commander.
"Falco, take point and clear out the mole missiles, focus fire on the left. I'll support you from the right." Fox brought up his terrain map and double checked their 6 o'clock, "Fay and Miyu, scatter those bombers before they have a chance to pester us and then fall back to our position. Slip, I want you working on the enemy analysis, and double time it."
"Ay I hear ya."
"Roger roger."
"Copy that."
"No problem!"
The team barreled towards a waterfall, seemingly accelerating towards certain suicide, when the Arwings crashed through the curtain of water. A whirling storm of water vapor and hissing exhaust engines screamed through the secret passage, launching the starfighters into the lowlands beyond.
The barren rock and soil of the northern lowlands had only ever been used as a quarry in ancient times, and more recently as a nature preserve for what limited life dwelled among the rocks. Now, tread marks through the mud and distant bombers painted the area in a more forbidding light.
Miyu and Fay lanced out, pushing their powerful interceptor engines to their limit. Fulfilling the role they were designed for, the X-02 Interceptors zipped towards the slothful bombers faster than the enemy could reorient themselves, and the girls fired off their AIM-99 'smart' bombs slaved to their targeting computers already dialed in for a wide-area dispersal.
The ensuing detonation glowed crimson as a temporary second sun, erasing the silhouette of many bombers in the enemy's number. This left a handful of stragglers to peel away for dear life.
"You're not getting away that easily!" Fay's spirited promise made Fox chuckle, assured the two were handling the air element while he and Falco took the mole mines out. Part of him was thankful that the avian wasn't second guessing his decision to send the interceptors after them just so he'd get more kills. Poor guy had a competitive streak a mile wide.
They left the rocky lowlands and began approaching the open sea with the mysterious enemy carrier contact drawing closer. McCloud double checked his gauges and rallied the team closer.
"Incoming enemy from above, drop altitude!"
Slowly, a gargantuan shape descended from the clouds. Two large, angular starship-grade missile launcher bays affixed to one side of the fuselage, and a snubnose fighter launch bay on the other side of the bridge spelled out a very dangerous foe. It was no wonder recon ships had gotten their tails kicked.
"So...someone wants to play..."
The sinister voice was almost taunting them. Adjusting his throttle, McCloud's eyes darted about the carrier, drafting up a plan on the fly even as Slippy spoke into his headset, "Enemy shield analyzed! I'm bringing it up on the monitor."
The diagram on the HUD spelled out a tall order; the Attack Carrier's shields were strong enough to make this a war of attrition they'd lose, however the shield would be dropped strategically when launching fighters or missiles.
"All aircraft," Fox said addressing the team, "Attack pattern Omicron, focus on the interior of the missile launcher and the fighter bay."
A pre-planned pattern, Omicron involved the team making almost an 'infinity' symbol with their flight paths as they separated to circle a stationary enemy with no cover. This gave them more opportunity to cycle across weak points and adjust their firing angles. Fox led Falco and Slippy in a divebomb that spilled their laser fire into the open launcher, slipping past the burning contrails of missiles fired point blank. The missle hatch closed briefly as they circled around.
Miyu and Fay zipped across and fired a full salvo into the top launcher just as it opened once more, setting off a chain reaction that decoupled the missile tube from it's perch.
"Nice one girls," he grinned as he saw Miyu pull off a quick aileron roll with a cheer.
McCloud jinked left sharply as his a high pitch warning alarm blared in his ear, swinging the starboard G-Diffuser engine out of a missile's path. The Attack Carrier was built to engage the Cornerian old gen C-16 snubnose fighters, which would have had little chance of evading the salvos at this range and speed; The Arwing's avionics were sensitive enough that it gave an alert pilot just enough agility to slip past the arcs of fire, reassuring Fox that he'd made the right call diverting the others to the overland objective.
"Watch that crossfire team," He cautioned.
If the harassment the missiles were causing was not enough, the launch bay doors retracted and swarms of Granga fighters poured out. With overclocked engines, the small starfighters were intended to outrun the more costly built equivalents coming out of Cornerian shipyards, at the price of frequent engine failure and short service life.
Andross employed the 'quantity over quality' philosophy.
Miyu and Fay diverted their attack to the fighters, rushing into their formation and scattering them like minnows before sharks.
"Leave the small fry to us, boys!" came the confident swagger from their resident lynx.
Fox dialed back and snagged a tail that Slippy had picked up, eyeing the shield guage displayed under the frog's name. A sliver was gone after he'd taken two hits.
"Get it together Slippy," the vulpine said over private comm, "You can do this."
"Th-thanks Fox!" The frog did have a tendency to choke, but encouraging the guy really improved his confidence. Holding his breath, he lined up the glowing digital crosshairs with an open tube on the remaining missile launcher, and sniped an active warhead setting off the remainder in a spectacular display of munitions.
He glanced out of his canopy for a moment, watching Falco invert during an evasive loop and batter the launch bay with his lasers. The whine of electrical discharge rose to a crescendo when an engine within went critical and the carrier's fighter bay tore apart even as the emergency release decoupled the structure from the main chassis.
"Stay sharp team," McCloud warned. The heady rush of landing kills could make anyone overconfident, and sloppy.
"Those who cross Andross will die…" The foreboding promise on the open comm was accompanied by background noise, panicked shouts. The Attack Carrier was cornered, and much more dangerous if they had nothing to lose. The Carrier fired it's thrusters in atmosphere, circling back for an ungainly attack run. Both missile tubes and the launch bay were sinking into the ocean below, leaving only the bridge and the chassis sporting the interstellar engine.
"Yeah, I'm calling bull. This guy's got nothi-WOAH!"
"Break off!" McCloud snarled, glaring at his LADAR minimap, praying his team would evade in time.
There was a wash of static across the comm. The canopies in their starfighters auto dimmed for a moment, and the vulpine blinked away dark spots as he tracked the screaming torrent of an energy weapon that had just blasted through the sky where he'd been a moment before.
"Die, Die, DIE!" The desperation in the enemy commander's voice was unnerving, yet there was no direction in his attack; just a beast lashing out wildly. The energy beam halted, folding solar arrays blossoming on the central body of the Carrier, before it swung labouredly around and fired another column of destruction towards the nimble interceptors zipping out of range.
I have you now.
McCloud keyed his teammates by toggling their icons, and pulled the team away in a wide loop, returning in an arrowhead attack pattern with their lasers charged. With the flip of a switch on his mark, he pulled the trigger and released his charged payload of guided plasma energy. For the other team members, a light blinked on their HUDs and they too fired off their payloads in sync.
Five bolts of emerald fire tracked the wounded carrier, and smashed into the exposed and unshielded frame. Bulkheads collapsed like wet cardboard, fire and secondary explosions erupting even as the powerful interstellar engines sputtered and died. For one stunning moment, the bulk hung in the air above the wide expanse of the sea below.
"Who…who ARE you…" A warbling cry of dismay across the open frequency was all there was. Then the Attack Carrier dipped powerlessly towards the waves, and the concussive force of striking the water set off what was left of the reactor, blossoming into a titanic explosion wreathed by rippling waves and seafoam.
"Sorry to jet, but we're in a hurry!" Fox couldn't resist the parting shot at the enemy who'd invaded their home. Even as the celebratory crowing came over the team's comm channels, he set a rally point at Team Two's location and pulled the fighters together in a diamond formation.
"Aaaaaand stay out!"
"Somehow…we actually did it!"
"Don't mess with us 'nomies!"
"Alright team, we're linking up with the others. Now that the Carrier's down the home guard can mop up what's left." Fox dialed up his LADAR to max range, frustrated at the difficulty the system had in detection in-atmosphere compared to open space, "Slip, any word from them on the comm?"
"One sec Fox, lemme calibrate the antenna…" The toad clattered on his keyboard for a moment, then the team's open frequency broadcast what he picked up ahead.
'Logan here, going down. Just below the mountains…'
The garbled transmission was interspersed with explosions and laser fire in the background.
There was nothing that needed to be said. Five Cornerians ripped their throttles back to full afterburn, and charged towards the backcountry evac zone.
Miyu was pulling her throttle lever white-knuckled as far as it would go. Her chest fluttered as her boyfriend's words rang in her head, biting her lip.
Come on come on come on….
Wolf O'Donnell was furious.
He would have done anything to have his claws around the scrawny neck of the ape that killed those civilians. The kind of pathetic scum that would get off on murdering the helpless like that brought his hackles up. He'd felt nothing but white-hot rage as he swept over the Venomian mech smashing joints, bulkheads and sensors with all the bolts his cannons could dish out.
Then Logan was shot down.
Stupid, he damned himself mentally, stupid, stupid, stupid!
A leader couldn't afford to get emotional. He let his anger affect his judgment, and now one of his team had gone down; Combat ineffective at best, dead at worst.
He bared his teeth in a snarl and forced his breathing into a steady rhythm. Think.
"Rally on me," He growled into the Team Two frequency, "We need to stop this thing from moving. Focus fire on the legs." He tapped his in-cockpit keyboard, setting a firing solution towards the articulated joints of the mech's legs.
Bill and Katt numbly called out their affirmation, falling into formation quickly. They'd all been shaken out of their anger when Logan went down, the stakes were high.
Fara pinged his console with a confirmation light. He blinked back green.
He was fine, he'd hold it together.
The Arwings and C-16's began to blast away in concert, chewing through the shields and blast plating of the walker even as missiles and anti-aircraft laser fire was returned in kind. Any articulation on a fighting vehicle necessitated a certain threshold for armor and functionality, so it was likely the thinnest there.
Sure enough, on their second pass one of the 'knees' buckled, and the mech locked up, teetering as the motion controls halted in their failsafe.
"Hold still so I can crush you!" came the frenzied shout from the enemy Lieutenant. More missile fire poured out, and Katt had to yelp and peel away in a wide evasive loop out of formation.
Wolf growled, eyes scouring the mech for any visible weak point. A heatsink, array, vents, anything to offer some clue for their next assault. The precious seconds ticked by, and he hesitated to designate a target.
Damn it, give me something, he thought, anything!
A light erupted from one of the broken hulks on the field, arcing up and smashing into the rear of the mech with a long whispy contrail.
There was an explosion on the reactor section of the mech, followed by secondary explosions and an electrical fire as the lumbering construct teetered more precociously, and then pitched forward and slammed into the ground with a tremendous earthquake of shifting soil and debris.
"Enemy mech down," came a familiar male voice, the wry grin audible to his close friends.
Cheering erupted on the Team Two frequency, and Wolf couldn't suppress his savage grin as he spied a tiny figure visible in the distance on a burned out hovercraft frame waving at them. A scavenged CDF rocket launcher still smoking on his shoulder.
"That'a pup! Jones always delivers!" Bill's excited howling rang with Katt's shrill cheering, and even Fara was banging on her canopy howling at their friend's survival and the impossible shot he'd taken.
"Let's finish this scum," Wolf growled as he designated the fallen mech as 'fire at will' on their targeting computers. The starfighters turned as one and made a beeline for the helpless bulk. Emerald green laser fire lanced out, smoking from their cannon barrels. The bolts stitched through the sky directly into the Venomian mech, splitting unshielded armor plating and exposed machinery with vengeful precision. It was poetic in an abstract way, that the warcrime-eager Venomian lieutenant would die much like his civilian victims had.
"My emperor...I've fai ou..."
The transmission trailed off into static, as the reactor went critical and the mech was consumed in a short explosion and folded in on itself. Not too shortly afterwards, several familiar aircraft appeared on the scopes, and some friendly voices chimed in across the comm.
Down below on the smoking ruin of a civilian hovercraft, Logan Jones slung the rocket launcher he'd taken from a dead CDF guardsman across his shoulder. He pulled a chemical flare from one of the pockets on his marine armor, popping the brilliant red flare to illuminate their clearing for the aircraft overhead. Around him were the survivors of the massacre, huddled together as best they could with tears, vindictive cheers and relief in all the spectrum of suffering and survival woven into one. He remembered the Human Covenant war, and the similar sights he'd seen far too often among those innocent lives uprooted by conflict. Here and now, they'd made a difference.
He smiled as he felt the afternoon sun warm his grime and blood stained face, enjoying the breeze as a familiar X-02 Interceptor began landing a short hop away. Maybe this was where he was meant to be, in this moment, fighting for freedom.
Miyu leapt out of her cockpit, running across the wild grass. He met her halfway, hugging the lynx tight as she crashed her lips to his, feeling the warmth and fluttering heartbeat in her chest sing with relief. The sensation of her silky furred arms, and the twilight of the approaching sunset made that moment seem almost unreal.
"Hey," she said wetly, looking up at him with those feline eyes shining in the amber light.
"Hey you," he replied, feeling one of her digits trace his soot stained jaw.
They pressed their foreheads together, as medical shuttles began to arrive from one of the neighboring cities, and friendly aircraft continued to flit through the skies shining in the sun.
Mission Complete