Chapter V - Touchdown
Fox and his team were in the armory of the Great Fox II, readying themselves for a mission in the frostbitten, snowy lands of an unknown, distant planet. Everyone had been wearing several layers, including thick, fluffy jackets and fabric masks for the lower half of their faces. Maybe it had just been the lack of information during their initial briefing, but knowing that he could possibly die on this mission, the same way his father did, leaving his friends to mourn over an empty grave was enough to give Fox chills, even in his layers of protective gear.
"We're gonna do fine, Fox." Krystal said with a smile as she pulled him out of his thoughts with a tight hug.
Fox put an arm around her back, and beeped their noses together. The small smile he wore was all she needed to know that at the very least he agreed.
"Everyone ready?" Fox said as he picked up his munitions bag.
His teammates all nodded in affirmation, and everyone headed for the hangar. After several minutes of waking, the door to the hangar opened and closed with a quiet hiss, revealing the four Arwing star fighters docked and ready to roll.
"Remember, only use your communicator until we're on the ground and keep your arwing's stealth mode engaged. They're probably already trying to track our signals down there. Your survival is priority number one, this mission comes second. Hopefully you all remember your roles because I'm not going over the plan a second time."
All four members of Star Fox began climbing into their respective arwings, the glass canopies hissing quietly as they shut. The latches closed and locked with an audible click.
Once he knew his team was ready, Fox hit the button to launch his arwing, and everyone else did the same. One by one, the four space fighters rocketed out of the Great Fox, forming up as they quickly made their way towards the snowy planet they were orbiting. Fox glanced up at his stealth switch, making sure he was being cloaked from all radar, sonar, and missile targeting system, aside from the naked eye. Flying through the atmosphere, he felt the jarring turbulence try to shake him from his seat, only being counteracted by the leather straps.
After the flames lapping at the edges of his fighter had begun to dissipate, Fox broke through the cloud line, as did the rest of his team, following closely behind him in a tight diamond formation. After a few miles of flying through pure white, Falco split off to head to his entry point, Slippy tailing behind him. As Fox began descending towards the surface, a small clearing in the miles of forest below them presented itself, to which Fox switched his VTOL on and closed the remaining vertical distance between his craft and the icy, frozen ground.
A couple seconds after he popped his canopy, Krystal's arwing gently touched down next to him, the whine of the engines slowly dying down as she began climbing out of her cockpit. As Fox jumped down from the nose of his craft, the cargo bay opened, revealing a munitions bag with his blaster, ice climbing equipment, a pair of binoculars, a couple water bottles, medical supplies, and an antimatter charge with a small display on its side with the words "ARM WHEN READY."
When Fox looked up, Krystal had already jumped out of her fighter and was a small distance away from him, looking around at the pristine landscape. With her bag slung over her shoulder, she jerked her head slightly in the direction of the mountain, motioning for him to catch up.
"And so it begins," the vulpine murmured under his mask.
A sheer cliff loomed over them, marking the service hatch and their entrance to the fortress. A few feet away from the face of the cliff, Fox dropped his bag. Opening it he pulled out a set of crampons to fit around his metal combat boots, two picks, a set of spikes, a and a lengthy spool of rope. Krystal did the same, and they both began quickly hammering the spikes into the cliff side. A few minutes later, Fox turned and began walking away from the cliff, back the way they came.
"Where are you going, Fox?" The azure vixen called.
"I'll show you in a second," he responded as he pulled two poles out of his bag, both much larger than the spikes they were shoving into the cliff face.
After driving the metal poles into the ground and making sure they were secure, he turned Krystal, who had walked up next to him.
"What are these for?" She asked.
"It's basically our main escape plan," Fox started as he handed her a spool of steel cable. "We'll be attaching the ends of these at the top in order to slide down them once we're done."
She nodded, and attached the cabling to her belt, and began unwinding it as she trudged back to the cliff through the thick snow. After waiting for her captain to catch up to her, they grabbed their picks and began to scale the face of the tall cliff.
/
A few minutes after Fox and Krystal began their climb, Falco and Slippy had made their touchdown. After looping wide around the base and flying way too close to the ground for comfort, they'd landed in a patch of forest about half a mile off to the side of the main entrance. As soon as they jumped out of their cockpits and grabbed their supplies, the two began approaching the edge of the treeline, revealing a giant mountain as well as the hangar to Wolf's hideout.
The avian stopped, and placed a feathered finger to his headset.
"Fox, come in. Have you reached the service hatch?"
A few moments of silence ensued, followed by the vulpine's voice.
"We're about halfway up the cliff side, let us know when you're in the server room."
"Wilco. Falco, out."
The toad standing next to him had been tapping away at his wrist comm, pulling up their route to the server room. A small string of beeps and bloops echoed back as Slippy's leathery fingers pointed to different buttons and settings on the holographic display. After a few more moments of Falco staring down the base in the distance and Slippy poking around on his communicator, the avian felt his teammate tap their forearms together. With a flick of his wrist, the hologram lit up above Falco's combat glove, small shadow-y lines appearing here and there as snowflakes passed in front of the beam projector.
Slippy pulled the white hood over his head and started through the snow. After brushing some fallen snow off of his plumage, Falco did the same and ran to catch up to him.
/
After almost twenty minutes of straight climbing, Fox pulled himself over the edge of the cliff, panting heavily as he threw himself towards the stable flat surface ahead of him that he had been waiting for. Not soon after, a pair of hands encased in combat gloves appeared on the edge of the cliff, gripping the solid rock as hard as they could as their owner heaved themselves up over the ledge.
Krystal rolled over on her back as she let out labored breaths, her lungs not having been acclimated to higher elevation quite as well as her captain's.
"When's our backup supposed to arrive?" Asked the vixen, staring into the cold, gray sky.
Fox pulled back a sleeve and checked his communicator. "Hopefully within the next hour or so. I'm just hoping they'll show up in time." He replied. "In the meantime, pass me your return cable."
Krystal reached down to her belt, and handed the vulpine the remaining amount of steel cable, about twelve feet. He drew a silver tube from his jacket, about one foot in length and with three buttons and a large slot on the side. Fox slid her cable into one end of the tube, pressed the button on the corresponding side, and waited a few moments until a loud clicking sound came from the device. After tugging on it to make sure it wouldn't slip, he turned and looked behind him.
A few yards away from them was a rock formation stretching vertically towards the sky, one that appeared to have enough girth to hold a considerable weight. Fox decided that it would do, and pulled the remaining cable around the towering section of stone.
After attaching his cable to the device and securing it, Fox pushed the third button in the center, and watched as the cable was pulled through the slot in the side of the tube, pulling the line tighter and tighter until it finally stopped with a small beep.
The two cables flying down over the ledge were now pulled taut, ready for their owners to use them for a quick getaway.
/
After a few minutes of trudging through the snow, Falco and Slippy neared a runway full of people and aircraft bustling about. They hid behind some large wooden crates, and Slippy pulled out the map of the building on his communicator.
"Looks like we'll need to get someone's card in order to get in," Falco said, observing the side entrance from behind the giant crates. He glanced over to his left, and saw someone walking towards them, hopefully for a reason other than their presence. The avian's heart rate instantly picked up, and quickly elbowed Slippy to get his attention.
The amphibian looked up from the holographic blue screen of his communicator, and peeked around the large wooden containers. Seeing as someone could easily compromise their position so early sent him into a panic. As the figure got closer and closer, Falco had to do some quick thinking. He could knock them out, which could probably buy them enough time to get inside the building before he woke back up, or he could just kill him and save the sentimentality for later.
Remembering his Captain's explicit instructions to "do what you need to do," Falco chose the latter. As whoever it was coming closer and closer to them rounded the crates, he kicked his leg out, hitting them in the shin and dropping them to the ground so he could throw him in a headlock and slap a feathered hand over their mouth before they could react.
After a mere split second, Falco knew what he had to do. His iron grip around the animal's neck tightened as he planted one hand on their chin, and the other on their temple. After a quick twist of his hands, a sickening crack rang out from the victim's neck as his spine shattered and cut through his brain stem.
Slippy watched the whole event unfold in a matter of seconds, his eyes still wide even after Falco had just neutralized the threat.
After a few moments of silence, the avian looked up at the shocked amphibian.
"What?"
Slippy shook his head and exhaled. Sure, the people they killed on missions were criminals, but taking someone's life was much easier to cope with when you did it from the confines and safety of a cockpit, when you couldn't see their eyes go wide the moment they realized that they were no longer to be allowed to live another day, or when you didn't do it at an arm's length.
Falco closed the unresponsive eyelids with a heavy sigh and looked over the victim of his actions. A simian of fairly thin stature, seemed to be in his late twenties and sporting several scars along his face. Down on his belt was a small plastic card with two red lines on it. A small string of numbers was written next to the pistripes, indicating some form of identification.
After grabbing the card off the body's belt, Falco raised a finger to his ear.
"Falco here. We've got access to the building. We'll be in the server room shortly."
"Copy that. Everything looks good from up here."
- Wlico: Short for "Will Comply," typically used in the military to convey that the message or assignment has been received, understood, and will be carried out accordingly.
- A Return Cable is typically used when one needs to get down a high surface quickly after climbing it. After securing one end to the ground, the user begins to climb, the spool unrolling on its own as they get higher. At the top, it can be secured to a second point, turning it into a makeshift zip-line. When using two return cables, the lines can be joined together and hung around a large section of rock, eliminating the need to drive a post into the ground to secure it to.
- Encrypted Near Field Communication or E-NFC is one of the primary methods for small devices like the wrist-mounted communicator to share small amounts of information. The donor device begins generating a small field at a specific, encrypted frequency - one that must be matched by the recipient for any data transfer to take place. When the devices are placed close enough together, the information passes through the field in a fraction of a second. Additionally, the frequency can be adjusted to precise figures for additional security, with newer designs allowing accuracy down to the hundred-thousandth of a hertz (0.00001 Hz).