Lylat system, Location unknown.
7 ALW (after Lylat wars)
Fox McCloud pulled the flight stick backwards towards him as hard as he could, his Space Dynamics Arwing model C pulling into a steep climb. This would have pancaked any space fighter's pilot with the sheer G-forces involved if it wasn't for the powerful G-diffusers preventing the vulpine from passing out. His pursuer shot underneath him, unable to follow the Arwing through its sharp pitch upwards. He completed his loop, getting on the tail of the ship that was chasing him. Without hesitation, Fox squeezed the trigger on the stick, sending a barrage of automatic laser cannon fire towards his target. The shots would never connect however, his target preformed a sharp barrel roll left, Fox's shots flying off into this starless void he found himself in. Fox still had no idea where he was, it was nothing like space in appearance; no distant stars twinkled in the background, no planets, asteroids or other objects common to space could be seen anywhere. It was just an inky black area of, nothing.
A gruff voice came over the comms system. "HA! Not good enough, pup!"
Fox recognized this voice well, too well. It belonged to none other than Wolf O'donnell, Fox's long-time rival of 8 years and counting. Fox had no idea how he had found himself here with him, but then again, the scarred lupine had a bad habit of showing up at the worst time possible.
"That pass was sloppy Wolf, even for you." Fox gritted his teeth as he growled back to wolf, an iron paw gripping the flight stick.
"Doesn't matter pup! You'll be space dust in just a bit anyways!"
Wolf's fighter banked into a hard-right turn in an attempt to get behind fox's Arwing. Seeing Wolf's intent, Fox pulled his ship upwards into a tight overbanked turn to get above the flat plane of Wolf's long curve, then using the superior maneuverability of his Arwing to pull sharply upwards, placing him directly behind the wolf again. Fox let off another flurry of blaster fire at close range, this was almost guaranteed to score a hit. This time however, a split second before Fox's blasts slammed into the rear of Wolf's ship, it vanished.
Fox's mind raced. "A cloaking system? No, no, those shots would have hit him anyways!"
Stealth systems were not a new concept to Fox, having encountered them built into certain models of Venomian fighter craft in the late stages of the war. Their ability to turn near invisible had only lasted for 30 seconds at most, according to Slippy, that was. Even then, a sharp eye was usually able to spot them if one knew what to look (or not look) for. Whatever was mounted to Wolf's ship was something else entirely, however. Fox's visor mounted over his right eye, linked to his ship's sensors, found nothing. No heat signatures, no energy spikes, nothing. Wolf had may as well never existed, Fox had no way of knowing from which direction Wolf could ambush him from. Knowing this, Fox continued to pull random maneuvers in a desperate attempt to throw off Wolf's aim whenever he did decide to pop back into reality.
Wolf's voice flooded his cockpit. "Like I said, pup!"
Fox's ship detected the heat signature of Wolf's ship directly behind him.
Fox threw the flight stick right in a desperate barrel roll, he successfully performed his trademark maneuver, expecting the shield it put up to absorb the worst of the fire. Instead of feeling the ship shudder from the impact and his shield's capacitor bank drain, a storm of kinetic rounds tore into his hull, turning expensive lightweight alloy and electronics into ribbons of scrap. His shield was Ignored entirely.
Nobody used kinetic weapons mounted to ships anymore! Fox's Arwing was crippled in a single burst by Wolf's cannon. "Warning: major internal damage detected, seek immediate repair" the Arwing's onboard computer spoke in a droning, female voice. He had lost his entire ability to maneuver; a fat round had probably buried itself in his main engine.
His sensors had somehow been spared by Wolf's assault of lead. They again found nothing.
"Bastard cloaked again!" Fox screamed internally to no one in particular.
The ship's reaction control thrusters had been able to stop his Arwing's flat spin, locking his view in one direction. Fox tasted copper in his mouth, the telltale sign of blood. He looked around his cockpit, a mess of glass, metal fragments, cloth and globs of his own blood floated around in the empty space. The canopy had formed a spiderweb of cracks; it's reinforced coating the only thing keeping it from completely shattering.
A flash of light blinked directly in from of him, Wolf's fighter seemingly appearing from it. Fox noticed the large, rotary cannon mounted on the nose, It's three barrels faintly glowing red from recent use. Wolf's voice filled what was left of Fox's cockpit.
"Well pup, looks like your little journey ends here! Thanks for the practice with this cannon though, I think I'm gonna like this thing!"
Fox said nothing back, only giving a defiant glare across the empty space at Wolf, having a primal grin stretched across his muzzle. Wolf squeezed the trigger for his new cannon, it's three barrels revving up to fire. Fox closed his eyes, waiting for Wolf to finish what was started 8 years ago.
The cannon let out a torrent of bullets, shredding what was left of Fox's Arwing into a cloud of unrecognizable, expensive scrap metal.
Fox McCloud snapped awake in his bed, eyes wide as dinner plates and heart racing. Darting his vision around his bedroom, expecting to still be in the cockpit of his doomed arwing. Once he realized his life wasn't in immediate danger, he let out a drawn-out breath and sat up in his bed. His fight with Wolf had been just a nasty dream. He was safe—for the moment. It was still dark outside, as evidenced by the lack of light bleeding through the tinted glass panels of his room. His bedside alarm clock read 5:06 AM; he had woken up nearly two hours earlier than usual.
"Dammit, so much for sleeping eight hours again..."
Fox pulled himself to his feet and walked over to his closet, the room automatically turning up the lights after sensing his movement. He threw on a pair of gray sweatpants and a white sleeveless shirt, then groggily making his way to the kitchen. The glass panels in the hallway were pitch black from the nighttime, only the distant twinkling lights of Corneria City could be seen in the distance. Fox's house was built near the top of a shallow hill, giving the place an incredible view of the city's skyline. Fox had got the place cheap, the previous owner giving him a steep discount for "Being the savior of the Lylat system!" as they had put it when Fox bought it.
Fox walked into the house's kitchen and poured himself a bowl of cereal, sitting down on the couch facing the window overlooking Corneria City a few miles away. The lights of the skyscrapers of downtown and the river of headlights from the multiple highways weaving around the region gleaming back at him from a distance. Fox panned his gaze across the skyline, as two small, glowing cyan lights caught his attention. "That's weird…" Fox thought as he tried taking a closer look, the sheer contrast to the city's distant yellow and white lights making the two easy to spot. He only got a quick look however; the two cyan dots seemed to vanish, the piercing darkness of the woods surrounding the house swallowing them whole.
"The hell… Yeah, I'm not awake yet."
Fox's smartphone buzzed awake, receiving an incoming call. His eyes squinted from the bright light of the screen, slowly adjusting to from the relative darkness of the room. The screen read "Restricted" Where the caller's number normally would have been. This could only mean one thing; Old General Pepper had decided to call him at 5 in the morning.
"This better be important…"
Fox tapped the screen to accept the call and raised the phone to his ear, The General's didn't even wait for Fox to say hello.
"Ah, Fox, glad you could take my call at this hour." Pepper said with a gruff voice.
"This better be good, General…" Fox whispered into his phone.
"Oh, I assure you Fox, this is."
Pepper gave out a long sigh through the phone, this shouldn't have happened.
"It's the Pathfinder; we lost contact with its comms beacon a few hours ago. We've heard nothing from the ship since."
Fox knew little about the CNV Pathfinder; other than it was one of the latest ships to try and leave Lylat. Plagued by delays and technical issues, only getting fixed recently and finally getting underway with its mission five months behind schedule.
"Well, I can't say I'm surprised you lost it already. I'd have better chances with my arwing than that expensive stick with engines ever could." Fox replied.
"Damnit Fox, I don't need your attitude right now!" said Pepper, a hint of annoyance in his voice becoming clear to Fox.
"Fine. Let me guess; you want me and my team to go look for it? Why can't you just hire some salvage company to go find it anyways?"
Peppers voice got notably quieter. "Because I can trust you with sensitive information, Fox. I can't with a bunch of civilians, or even my own soldiers sometimes."
"Sensitive information?" Fox thought to himself; the Pathfinder was just an exploration ship, why would anything even remotely classified be involved?
Fox pressed for more information, "What do you mean by 'sensitive information', Pepper? Something you're not telling me?"
Pepper sighed again, "All I'm authorized to tell you is that it's related to the Pathfinders mission. It wasn't sent towards the Vega system just for colonization, after all…"
"And that reason being? General, if it's anything I should be worried about, I need to know."
"I'm sorry Fox; like I said, that's all I'm authorized to tell you." Pepper cleared his throat "Now, as I was saying: The only thing you and your team need to do is find the Pathfinder and recover it's flight data recorder, before I'm forced to send my own search team."
Fox wolfed down the first mouthful of his cereal, it being slightly soggy from sitting in milk, "I take it that recorder has all that 'sensitive information' you want back?"
"Yes, I'll send you any mission critical data to the Great Fox's computer systems—provided you accept this mission, of course. Speaking of which…"
Fox had another mouthful of cereal, "Do I really have a choice with this?"
Another sigh escaped the General's mouth, "I'm afraid not Fox, that data could… well, all I'll say is this: the status quo of Lylat would be rather disturbed if that data gets out."
"Uh, alright then. How much time are you allowing with this?"
"Three days, starting now. I can't keep the Pathfinder's disappearance secret for too much longer I'm afraid."
"Well, looks like I have my work cut out for me then. I'll send you updates on this whenever I can, General."
"Thank you, Fox, I won't take any more of your time, Pepper out."
Fox finished his early breakfast and then began to wake up the rest of the team, starting with Peppy; he was better at dealing with Falco's sleepy wrath.
A few hours and cups of coffee later, the whole Star fox team sat gathered around the briefing room table, the morning light pouring into the room through the windows. The team was still in various states of waking up, with Fox being the only one even remotely ready for leaving earlier than usual. Falco was still half-asleep—only paying a slight amount of attention. Peppy was still in his bath robe, having just got of the shower but was otherwise mostly awake. Slippy being somewhere in between the hare and the blue avian in terms of being awake.
Fox spoke up, "Alright, now that everyone's here…"
Falco collapsed in his chair; sleep finally overtaking him again. Followed by a deep snore emitting from his beak.
"FALCO!" Fox yelled, the avian snapped awake almost as fast as he dozed off.
"U-uh, what? Oh, uh, sorry…" Falco groggily said back.
Fox narrowed his eyes at the bird briefly, then continued.
"Now, as I was saying. I got a call from General Pepper a few hours ago about another mission he had for us."
The table lit up, a holographic image of the whole Lylat system being displayed in a soft blue popped up. The map zoomed in to the coordinates gave by Pepper, it was effectively in the middle of nowhere.
Fox spoke up again, "The mission's pretty simple, in theory. That new deep-space ship that was launched a few weeks ago…"
Peppy chimed in, "Ha! I knew that fancy bucket of a ship wouldn't even make it outta' the system!"
"Exactly, it's transponder beacon went silent a few days ago. So old Pepper's sending us out to go find it…" Fox said back.
"Wait, wait, wait." It was Falco, "So, pepper wants us to fly out to the middle a' nowhere, then look around for a ship that's probably just a wreck by now? I'm sorry Foxie, but I aint too sure that's worth our time…"
"Glad you asked Falco. Well, turns out the ship's data recorder has some classified data on it, data that Pepper doesn't want getting out." Fox replied.
"Data huh? What kinda' data? Pepper's search history? What he keeps in Area 12 down on Macbeth?" said Falco.
"Hell, you might be right for all I know. He wasn't exactly forthcoming with information. What I do know is that we have a limited window to pull this off—Pepper can't keep the fact that their new, expensive ship just disappeared for too much longer."
Fox decided to finish up the briefing "Alright, any questions?"
Peppy spoke up "Yeah, do we know what exactly happened to the Pathfinder? Other than it just stopped responding?"
"No, I hate to say it, but we don't."
Corneria City, Apollo Spaceport.
Fox and his team strolled out of the light-rail train and stepped onto the station's concrete platform; the cool morning air breezed down the platform, giving Fox a slight chill. Across the parking lot sat the Apollo Spaceport: Corneria's third largest ground-based spaceport, it's large steel and concrete administration building being the first thing coming into view. Behind the admin building sat the spaceport itself; a massive grid of steel framework and infrastructure making up the numerous docking bays. Hundreds of ships came and left every week, from the smallest of personal shuttles to the gigantic bulk freighters hauling thousands of tons of goods from one end of Lylat to the other.
Fox and his team walked through the front doors of the admin building, its heated interior providing relief from the chill of outside. He strolled up to the reception desk, a Husky was sitting behind the counter, filing through the small mountain of paperwork before him. He noticed Fox, a look of relief growing on his face; hopefully this vulpine would take enough to finish his shift without doing anymore damn paperwork. The Husky spoke up when Fox approached the desk.
"Hello, can I help you with anything?" said the Husky, following the standard greeting that was wrote in the employee's handbook for the spaceport.
"Yeah, I'm looking to get my ship out of long-term storage?" Fox replied. "It's a light tactical carrier, white paint job?"
The husky sat down in his office chair and rolled himself over to a computer, beginning to search for a ship of the Fox's description. Fox sat down in one of the armchairs in the lobby and pulled out his phone, his green eyes scanning the virtual pile of junk mail he had yet to delete.
"Another shady Aquan banking service, delete… ad for Smith and Kepler small-arms, delete… Fountunian prince wants money, delete…"
Fox's fur stood on-end, the distinct feeling of being watched creeping upon him. He looked around the lobby, expecting to see Falco leaning over his shoulder and reading Fox's email. No, Falco was over by the small, automated café with Peppy getting yet another coffee. Slippy was sitting across from fox, eyes buried in a Mechanics Monthly magazine. Fox stared out the lobby window, across the parking lot and rail-line into the woods. The two cyan dots were back, almost as if glaring back at him from the tree line.
Fox grabbed his blaster pistol from its holster and ran for the door, only Peppy noticed him sprint for the exit.
"Fox! Where the hell you goin'! Peppy yelled, Fox ignored him, however.
The vulpine dashed across the spaceport's parking lot, traffic was light so the risk of being flattened by an SUV was minimal. Fox pulled himself over the chain-link fence separating the lot from the rail station, he leaped across the tracks and ran into the woods. He raised his pistol, lining up the front and rear sights and began searching for who—or what, was watching him.
His search turned up nothing, whoever was doing this knew how to cover their tracks; no footprints in the dirt were left behind, nothing to suggest anyone had been here.
"Bastard…" Fox said to himself.
"Fox! What the hell are you doin' over there?"
Fox whipped around at the sound of his name, aiming his pistol at the source. It was Peppy; he had followed Fox across the parking lot and was standing on the other side of the fence.
"Dammnit Fox! Put that thing down!" Peppy yelled across the tracks.
"Oh, u-uh, shit, sorry Peppy..."
Fox walked back to the fence, panting from his sprint into the woods. Peppy spoke again.
"What the hell's gotten to you, Fox? You just drew your gun and bolted out here!"
"Peppy, I… I think someone's watching us. I-I keep seeing these two lights in the woods, but whenever I try to look closer, they… they just disappear!"
"Fox, you know you start seein' things when you don't sleep well."
"No, no, it's not like that, it's the same two lights that I saw this morning before Pepper called…"
Peppy sighed, "Look, Fox, we're all tired here—hell, Falco's still barely awake too. Come on Inside and get another coffee."
"Yeah, good idea…"
Fox and Peppy walked back to the admin building, the heater again providing refuge from the chilly winter air. Peppy handed Fox another cup of coffee as he walked to the front desk.
"Ah, here we are." The husky said, "Your ship is parked in bay 83B, the Great Fox correct?"
"Yep, the one and only." Fox replied with a small grin.
"I'll unlock the doors for you, Mr. McCloud. Just take a left at the end of the hall, one of the trams should already be waiting for you."
The tram glided down its rail, small repulsor pads on the undercarriage ensuring a smooth ride. The giant jungle of durasteel and concrete framework making up the spaceport's storage bays whizzing past. Fox looked out the window, seeing the distinct solid white paint job and angled hull plating of the Star Fox's team mothership, The Great Fox. The small tram approached the platform and came to a halt, its doors opening with a pneumatic hiss. The team stepped off; the station conveniently close to the Great Fox's landing bay. Fox walked across the concrete landing pad, the ship's majestic, angled hull plating towering over him.
The team took the elevator built into the giant framework of the spaceport to an access bridge, leading across to one of the ships airlocks. Fox pulled back a small hatch next to the airlock door on the hull, a small keypad under it.
"You still remember ya' access code, Foxy?" Falco called.
Fox's eyes narrowed, "Dammit Falco, you gotta stop calling me that." he rolled his eyes, "And yeah, I still know it, I'm not stupid…"
Fox reached out with his paw to put in his code.
1-3-9-4? The keypad beeped, it's small screen flashing Access Denied
Oh crap… Fox thought to himself, looks like it's time to be an idiot in front of my whole team again…
He tried the pad again, 1-9-8-4?
Same result. Falco leaned over. "Ehhhhhh, I dunno' Foxy… You so sure bout' that?"
Fox spun around, glaring at the bird, "Shut up Falco! I don't need this from you right now!"
Peppy sighed, walking over to where Fox stood, "Knock it off you two!" He said, shaking his head. "I swear, one a' these days ya' bickering is gonna get someone killed…"
Peppy put in his own code, the keypad turning green and the airlock door sliding open. Peppy walked inside the ship. Fox looked back at Falco, a smug grin across his beak as he walked past.
I know he's just always teasing me, but I'm getting real sick of his 'jokes'… Fox thought, following Falco inside the ship.
Location [REDACTED], date [REDACTED]
"General Noveru, you were right; Our inventory and maintenance logs are inconsistent, we're missing an entire space-superiority fighter from one of our assault carrier's usual strike-craft armament."
"Which model? With any luck it's not of one the prototypes…"
The voice over the communications channel sighed, "Our records indicate it is, unfortunately."
"Do we know where it was lost? Or how?" Noveru asked, her canid eyes narrowing at the news.
"As for how, no, we don't. What we do know however is where, roughly, at least. Unfortunately, I don't have time at the moment to tell you the details in person, I'll forward everything we know to you directly, however."
"Thank you, sir." She responded, "I imagine you want me in charge of recovering that prototype?"
"Correct, I'm giving you complete jurisdiction over this operation, as well as all the manpower and resources you need for it."
"Thank you, Grand Marshal. I'll see that this gets done."
"Good. Now, we both know the potential risk if someone finds that prototype. Rather, catastrophic, risks…"