The sight struck Fox with a terror so absolute, he almost could not accept what he was seeing. A citykiller, hurtling directly toward - oh, no, oh no no no no no No No FUCK FUCK FUCK!
"Move! Move! Move!" Fox shouted at Huma, the alcohol in his system all but vanishing, his intoxication flushed out by pure adrenaline. There were L-wings docked at the airfield just behind the bar - he and Huma could be up in the air in no time flat.
Which is about how much time they had left.
Huma rapidly outpaced Fox as the two tore down the road, her longer legs carrying her past the gathering crowds of horrified onlookers. They could feel the cool air of the station burning in their heaving lungs.
Simultaneously, their in-ear communicators crackled to life - a three-note jingle signified that this call was coming over the G-line - Star Fox's direct connection to Corneria High Command.
"Fox," came General Pepper's tired, stern voice, "I need you in the air-"
"On our way, sir, we're right off the Pom airfield, just a couple minutes!" Fox called back, aware that they didn't have that kind of time. He grit his teeth and pumped his legs faster.
The asteroid was headed right for Corneria City.
"This is not a drill," droned ROB as red, pulsing lights and the wailing of a thousand sirens echoed through the decks of the Great Fox. Moisturizing mucus pellets flicked off Slippy's skin as he wheeled around the control deck in his rolling chair, his constant refrain of ohshitohfuckohgods nearly as repetitive and shrill as the sirens. He had not been with Star Fox long enough to know what the protocols were for a situation like this; if Slippy's gut was right, there probably weren't any protocols in place.
Star Fox had never been meant to be the savior of Corneria - before the war, they never needed to be prepared for that sort of thing.
The comms board flashed with a dozen different call lights from across the Great Fox.
"Go for Slippy!" he called out breathlessly after pressing the connect button. On a nearby monitor, an image appeared - a disheveled hare in his middle age, mid-sprint down one of the Great Fox's arteries.
"Slippy, I'm going to need you and ROB to authorize every Arwing on the ship for launch, we need our ships on that rock at once!" Peppy commanded, eliciting a frantic nod from Slippy as he flipped a series of switches.
On the lower decks, the Star Fox teams assembled.
Fox and Huma emerged onto the airfield amidst a series of launching L-Wings; neither could hear a word spoken over the roar of the engines as a flight officer ushered the two of them toward two unoccupied fighters and left them with a salute.
The two pilots settled into the cockpits of their L-Wings as they remembered their training, their eyes darting around the controls, cataloging each switch, each gauge.
A vibration in their communicators signified that their heads-up displays were now synced to their ships.
Within seconds of takeoff, their radios automatically patched into the G-line. The general's face appeared on their dash monitors.
"Talk to me, General, what's going on? Where did this thing come from?" Fox shouted to the general, his right hand deftly pushing the thrusters forward. In his peripheral vision, he could see Huma's L-wing flying alongside his - he noticed that hers was specialized for bombing.
"Far's we can tell, a perfect storm. Either one absolute cosmic hell of a coincidence, or Corneria is under attack."
"By who?" Huma's voice crackled through the receiver. "Remnants?"
"Unknown," came Pepper's stoic, gravelly voice. "We've got the president on the other line, and every eye in the Federation pointed at this thing. We're evacuating Corneria City, but Fox-"
"There's no time. Rock that size'll take out everything inside the 810 Loop, there's no way you can move four million people that fast."
Fox knew what this meant. So did Huma.
"We're on it, sir! We won't let that asteroid hit the city!" Fox asserted, with characteristic bravado. Pepper nodded.
"Good luck," he said, and signed off. Huma's face replaced his on the monitor.
"That thing's huge, Fox," she observed. "I don't know if we've got the firepower we need to take something like that out. What are your orders?"
Fox's eyes narrowed with determination. "No matter what - we stop that thing!"
"B-Team, I need you to get a move on," Peppy ordered over his headset, the electronics whining in his ear as he did. He stood centered on the command deck of the Great Fox, a circular, gunmetal gray room lined with thick, rubber-wrapped cables and holographic screens. On the main screen before him, he saw the enemy - an asteroid, a mile wide. It hovered before him like an unfeeling giant.
He could see that the majority of the team had not yet deployed. Silently, he prayed that they'd practiced emergency management well enough.
"Roger, Commander Hare," came the gruff voice of a tanuki over the communicator. "Heavy weapons locked and loaded, pre-flight check complete. Launch in 10."
"Godspeed, de Pon," the hare offered, tired, but focused. "Give it everything you got."
As Peppy stared in existential awe at the citykiller, a million lines of text flashed across the screens in front of him. The Great Fox was analyzing the asteroid as it tumbled unceremoniously in the direction of Corneria City, its cameras breaking down the elements outgassing from the rock's icy surface. There had to be a match somewhere in the government's astronomical database; if this was an attack, they needed to know where it had come from.
He hoped that whatever it was made of, it was fragile. Even so - if enough of that thing got through, the devastation would be absolute. There would be no recovery; the Cornerian Nation would crumble.
Things were moving. The quiet, echoing chambers of Nevehan were suddenly aflutter with the sound of millions of beating hindwings. Swarms of Titanian footsoldiers moved in lockstep throughout the colony, like ants defending a disturbed mound.
In the deepest chambers of the colony lived the Zmey; Gorynych, Tugarin and Bogatyr. Though housed in the bodies of elders, the three men held a great and terrible power.
The Empress entered the Zmey's chamber with a silent flourish, her quiet footfalls hidden beneath the louder clopping of the chamber's caretaker, following closely behind her.
She looked upon the center of the chamber to see the three old men lying in pools of briney mud, their heads and antenna dripping with the clay-like fluids. Two lay perfectly still, an almost deathly still. The other's eyes and antenna twitched, like one might in a dream.
The three most powerful men in history. Eating from the palm of her hand.
"Is he conscious?" the empress asked the caretaker, a woman half her height and lesser still her width. The caretaker shook her head.
"No, milady - he will not until his task is complete."
"Then I shall await him," the empress made known. "With your blessing, I'd like to remain in the chamber until it is done."
"My empress, you do not need my blessing to do as you please," the caretaker affirmed. The empress clicked her mandibles. Her faded purple gown flowing in the chamber's cool wind, she approached the tubs of goop in the center of the room and sat down on the lip of Bogatyr's pool. He was a small man, his carapace covered in the ancient scars of battle. Looking at him now, one might wonder where the warrior in him had gone.
The smell of the mud was pleasant; she swept the tip of her foreleg through it and observed the salty, pond-like essence through the small hairs covering the appendage. It almost reminded her of a birthing; the same slick, granulated, slimy feel.
As she waited, she began to play; a soft, chirping sound.
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