Through Unheard Eyes

Author's Note: Well, er, I'm not quite sure the personal messages were quite necessary, foxbird22, but thanks anyway, for the review as well.
Chapter 4 Crossroads
Starfleet HQ had rarely been this busy, but under General Pepper's orders, the usually well-ordered infrastructure was quickly collapsing under the strain. Starfleet had always been given some measure of warning for launch, and had never scrambled before.

Though this wasn't entirely true, reflected Alanaldo. The Cornerian Army was still the senior service, and Starfleet did not yet have the government leverage to go against a direct order from the commanding officer. Which would be, to use his full title, Five-Star Supreme Combat General of the Armed Forces of Corneria Order of Black Sky Pepper. As good of a man as Pepper was, his sway over the fleet could be far worse then annoying at times.

Revi winced at the flashes of red light in the corridor. Ahead was the atrium, which was at least brighter then this access hallway. As the flood of men entered the room however and were immediately bottlenecked by the single bridge, the natural light of Solar was being drained from the room. The bright panels of sunlight seemed to be almost reluctant as they withdrew, leaving only when the blast panels closed completely over the glass. The way now lit only by harsh artificial lighting and periodically flashing alert lamps, Revi was about to make a silent prayer to the Creator when exactly what he had anticipated came to pass.

That was, the base went to tactical alert. The lights dimmed significantly, leaving only the pulsing red alert lamps to give them flashes of vision. Revi clapped a paw to his forehead- the lighting was already giving him a headache. Kelmar grabbed him by the arm and continued to drag him along. Despite Revi's wishes to slow down, his brother was more sturdily-built and easily pulled him along to keep up with Captain Alanaldo and Lionel, who were now leading the pack.

As the group scrambled into the emergency elevators and staircases, Alanaldo cleared his voice and said as clearly as he could, "Emergency Override Omega-Four." The lift they were in began to rocket downwards with alarming speed as the safety protocols were deactivated. When the lift stopped, it was with a jarring crash that knocked he and his staff to the floor. The doors opened and they squeezed out, making a beeline for where the Verity's docking port was. This was of critical importance, as the Verity held the leading position on the launching track, and if she was not moved, it would effectively block every ship behind them.

As they ran on, Alanaldo could see docking ports being extended with great speed, latching onto their targets with rolling booms. Crewmen scrambled in frantically, and the running lights of the cruisers began to activate one by one. Then they came to the head of the column- and the Verity was not there. Dumbfounded, the crew came to a halt as Alanaldo grappled with his belt in a fury, eventually whipping out a communicator. He tapped the channel for Beltino, and almost before the answering tone was emitted, he was bellowing into it- "Beltino, where the hell is my ship?!?"

"I'm as aware of the scramble as you are, captain Alanaldo," replied the toad in a withering tone, "but if you expected us to have your ship overhauled in a day, you are sadly mistaken."

"Quick, get to the Halcyon-" began Alanaldo before the ship in question went roaring down the launch track. Ship after ship came out from their docking rings, swung onto the main track, and blasted away.

Alanaldo and his crew were left staring after the departing fleet. "Damn," was all the captain could say. Kelmar turned to shake a fist at the nearby security camera. Others in the crew began to join him as Alanaldo continued to rant and rave at Beltino.

"Um, sir?" asked a nervous aide. Pepper made an apologetic gesture and stepped away from the holographic transmitter. His face was a mask of fury.

"This had better be important," he rumbled, "because you just interrupted a highly important briefing with Star Fox." The aide looked more nervous then before, then walked Pepper over to a wall monitor and patched through a very certain camera feed, saying as he did so, "You better have a look at this."

Pepper could only stare before he had to rub his eyes. Behind him, he could hear protests of outrage as somebody hacked into the briefing channel, but the hound found he could care less at the moment. The sight of the Verity's entire crew compliment shaking their fists at him had that mind-numbing effect.

"We've got to find them a ship," muttered Pepper, appalled. He turned to the aide. "Get me that crackerjack in command of the Alheon. I'm relieving him of duty. Tell that mob," he waved at the screen, "that they need to get to launching pad five, and fast. You know what to do." The aide nodded as Pepper turned back to his briefly, rapidly composing himself for a brief situation with Star Fox. He quietly cut into a private channel with Beltino, sternly instructing the toad not to talk of Titania to the team. Pepper felt they would be honor-bound to go for Titania, and the Core Memory was of much greater importance at the moment.

Several minutes later, the bridge crew could not help shaking their fists at a highly indignant crew compliment under Captain Walter. The mallard had been under the impression that his ship was being hijacked, despite an aide's reassurances to the contrary. But he had not been able to stop the Verity's crew from swarming the ship and taking her over, leaving him and a rather angry crew on the pad to shake their fists at a terrified aide as the Alheon sailed away.

The shaking of fists on the bridge soon became a very different kind of shaking- one born of laughter. All five of the men could now barely stand, wracked with chuckles as they were.

"Could you see the look on their stupid faces?" gasped Gary, tears streaming down his face, leaving faint trails where the fur was usually well groomed. He sagged over his console, still howling with laughter. The effects were contagious- even as the much faster dreadnought sailed into the atmosphere to overtake the fleet, the crew was still laughing. There might be a moment of silence, and then someone would giggle and it would all begin anew.

With a stitch in his side, Captain Alanaldo was the first to regain his composure. Struggling to keep a straight face, he overrode the helm controls from the command platform and rolled the ship sharply, bringing an end to the merriment as his senior officers went sliding about. There were no more laughs as the Alheon leapt to warp, catching the fleet just as they passed Meteos.

The fleet later received a transmission from Star Fox, but Alanaldo refused to answer it. In almost perfect formation, his fleet continued on with him at point in the dreadnought battlecruiser, Alheon. Four running lights blinked on her wingtips, but these were lost to sight with the ship's speed.

With the positioning satellites down, presumably due to Aparoid attack, the simple route to Titania, the Orbital Gate, became quite useless, as calibrating it without the aid of the navigational beacons on the satellites would take far more time then proceeding to the destination under warp would.

The stars blurred as the fleet dropped back to cruising speeds, the streaks of starlight fading into mere pinpricks of white amidst the void. The cause of the trouble was quite clear- three cruisers were clearly targeting the mining facility from orbit, and what was more, three distinct red and black fighters were keeping the cruisers under close escort.

"We got called out for this?" asked Alanaldo in disgust. "This is the kind of job Star Fox is supposed to take. You don't call out a fleet to try and destroy fighters." He shrugged as the three Wolfens broke away and moved to engage. The Alheon shook slightly as she came under fire. The lasers of Star Wolf dispersed harmlessly over the ship's hull plating with metallic pings. Ignoring them, Alheon turned to Revi. "Fire the main guns," he ordered. The other otter nodded and dipped his head.

The Alheon then shook to a different tune, white light spilling from sparkling gun barrels. Then an angry red burst of plasma erupted from two muzzles, streaking away at one of the cruisers. The other ship, already rather decrepit from battles long gone, exploded into a cloud of debris and flame. The other ships joined, and the other cruisers succumbed quickly. Alanaldo was about to congratulate his crew when the Alheon lurched heavily. There were the sounds of explosions, and Lionel looked down at his console to ascertain the type of damage.

"Plasma leaks on the port engine, and there's a small hull breach above that that's venting atmosphere. No one was injured, the section with the breach is sealed off."

"Well, your job is done for today," replied Alanaldo. "You see, it looks like our friends just went to warp. So unless we run into something, that's the most damage this ship will be taking. However," he continued, eyes narrowing, "the army won't be here anytime soon. Kelmar, take your boarding defense party down to the surface. Help the miners. Looks like there's still fighting going on there." He turned to Revi. "Signal that to the rest of the fleet."

In the end, Kelmar had not exactly done what Alanaldo had wanted, but with the same effect. Noticing that the ship was equipped with many medium-grade Landmaster tanks and some Lerowing IIs, he's crammed most of his men into the Landmasters and the few who could fly into the Lerowings. This done, Kelmar had done a manual power reroute to the transmission system and beamed the lot of them to the surface.

Kelmar swore that the second the transmission was complete, one of the Landmasters was hit by a rocket launcher and was nearly blown over onto its side by the blast. The tank driver was able to put his tank under control with a quick rocket burst, and his gunner swung the turret over and wiped out the offending ruffian in a blaze of radiant energy. Everywhere however, it seemed there was somebody with a rocket launcher who was ready to step from behind something to take a shot at them. Landmaster tanks fired bursts of laser fire, glowing green globules of energy, trailing light behind them as they impacted into structures all around the facility. Great crashing explosions of flame and light echoed all around the station, sending burning debris and shrapnel spinning about, embedding themselves in the dusty Titanian sand. Those that were burning extinguished themselves with soft hisses and plumes of smoke.

"Team, get moving," barked Kelmar. "We're sitting ducks. Set your guns to lethal- not incinderary or explosive! Otherwise, we'll end up doing their job of destroying this place for them."

A new battery of rocket and grenade fire opened fire on them, and the Landmasters bucked as they attempted to move out of the way. The tank treads caught and the armored units went leaping out of the way. But before any of them could so much as sight on the battery, one of the circling Lerowings blew it up in a flash of light and an angry roar as the munitions detonated. The tanks weathered the blast without too much trouble, and it looked like the battle was over when a squad of riflemen leapt from cover to pummel the tanks with laser fire. And while secondary guns on these Landmasters, gattling guns, mowed many of these men down, still more stepped in to take their place

Kelmar opened the hatch of his Landmaster to pipe several shots out from a standard officer-issue blast pistol before ducking back inside. Eventually, the rain of grenade and rocket fire abated and then ceased altogether. Scans quickly revealed the intruders had taken refuge now inside the mining base, where the Landmasters could not go.

The otterr swore after letting Alanaldo know of the new development before he popped the hatch, drew his service pistol again, and leapt from the tank to land on the sandy soil, a cloud of dust rising to meet him. Others left their tanks as well, while some remained inside as a rearguard. A disabled tank was used as a barricade from which to fire from. The enemy was driven away from the entrance, and under the command of Commander Archer, a brave old seal, the ground detachment went rushing into the corridor.

The tide of battle was to turn dramatically once they were inside. As far as surroundings went, a mining base was quite close to a starship, and this was the home turf for the ground forces, whose main jobs were to dissuade boarders from staying aboard. Kelmar lobbed a flash grenade around the corner and shut his eyes. No screaming. Commander Archer made the all clear signal, then readied his rifle and stepped around the corner. It was a short, clear passage that lead to a three-way junction. Men warily spread through the passage and leapt around corners as the group fanned out through the base.

Alanaldo was listening to status reports from the bridge when a different communication came to him, this one on a civilian channel. He answered it with a signal to Revi. A miner's face appeared on the viewscreen. He looked equally frightened and annoyed.

"Tell your men to hurry up here! They're trying to override the lockout. If they get in here, it'll be a massacre! We're almost out of ammunition!" The channel then closed without further ado.

Revi raised an eyebrow at Lionel before he relayed the message to Commander Archer.

The seal looked up from behind the crate of refined ore, putting a hand over his ear to ensure he'd heard the communication properly. When he knew he did, he switched his headset off with an oath and immediately signaled an attack on the entrenched ruffians behind their own barricades. Kelmar swung out from behind his crate and loosed several shots with his service pistol. The red laser bolts slammed into the stacked crates of ore and blew away the crate covering, exposing the ore. Kelmar swore when he remembered that this was a duraluminum plant, and that duraluminum ore was highly resistant to laser bolts. He might as well be firing at his starship.

The end of the stalemate came when Archer quietly slunk along one wall and then set his weapon on beam stun. Pulling the trigger, he looked away as the weapon fired a cone of dazzling white light. As the ruffians stuck their head about the barrier to investigate, they were struck by the blaze of light and knocked out.

Archer waved a signal and they made a rush around the barrier to stun the others. The party continued on through the hallway to make a run down for the locked-down doors where the miners were hiding.

One of the crewmen opened fire with a machine gun, bringing down three ruffians outside the door. Kelmar's service pistol dropped another two, and the rest of the crew killed five more. But it was Commander Archer who cleared the room. The seal's rifle went onto full automatic and killed eight before so much as a shot was fired back in return. The group then stampeded onto the next group besieging the doors, this one far larger. They had been alerted by the weapons fire down the hall, and the landing party was met almost immediately by a vicious spray of lasers. As they ducked back around, Archer the seal shouted, "At least they have no grenades!"

"Don't jinx us!" yelled back a crewman. As everyone leapt out for a volley of return fire, two of the men were dropped, one permanently. The other was pulled back around the corner with a smoking hole in his shoulder. She gritted her teeth before handing her gun to Kelmar. The otter took it with a brief smile of thanks before he ducked around the wall and fired with a burst of machine-gun fire. He pulled back with a look of surprise on his face, spinning the gun around his finger.

"Bit of a kick for something not much bigger then my service gun," he remarked to the downed crewman. She winked.

"Standard issue if you're on a flagship. I was allowed to keep mine. Never had to use it as a security guard."

"Then you're a lucky girl," replied Kelmar, wincing as there was a scream from the enemy. It looked like Commander Archer was having his bit of fun. The seal came back with his gun smoking from the heat of firing.

The wounded crewman soon passed out from a delayed shock reaction, and the situation was not looking up for the group when a long-delayed second group came around the other corner to pin the ruffians from their unguarded side. A second rush from the first group under Archer lead to the formation of a pincer movement. The ruffian defense broke and they died where they stood, even as two of the freshly-arrived crewmen were injured- though not killed- by friendly fire. It wasn't long before the miners were coaxed from their safe haven and order was restored. But it took over an hour to collect the scattered Landmasters and Lerowings, and an annoyed Captain Alanaldo simply dumped the bulk of the damage paperwork on Kelmar, who could do it better anyways. The otter took this all in stride and thanked his stars that he was not killed or hurt in the confrontation.

He later made a small prayer for the dead soldier he'd seen that day as the fleet traveled back under high warp. They were forced to slow briefly as Star Fox crossed their path towards Fichina, then they continued on, being joined by the other fleet bodies that had returned from investigating the communication satellites. Their findings were far more troubling- aparoids had been hijacking the airwaves and using the satellites to spy on Cornerian fleet movements, and the deployment of several mercenary groups under army pay. It was a slightly more subdued group that returned to Cornerian orbit and descended into the launch bays.
Despite the immaturity of the act, Captain Alanaldo could not refrain from shaking a fist at a security camera as he passed into the base. His staff joined in on the joke as well, something that would eventually become a wardroom legend in the world of officers and crewmen.
On the other side of Titania was a fourth ruffian cruiser, with Wolf O'Donnell's personal emblem stamped upon it. Hitherto unnoticed, it had been there as a safeguard in case the main body of the landing force were compromised.

Instead, it had fallen prey to the aparoids. A crystalline structure now coated much of the ship, and the hallways now were full of men both dead and worse then that. Glowing veins of blue, striped with green ran through the ship, and the viewpane on the bridge was rimmed eerily with amethyst crystals that spiked out towards the center. Crewmen lay dead and slumped over their consoles as a lone aparoid wandered the room, occasionally biting one of the corpses. It wasn't long before these dead bodies were restored to a limited extent, their former identities being stripped away. These dead men awoke from their eternal slumber briefly, only to be hit by a mind-crushing presence within their heads. They would struggle, they might scream. But in the end, the Queen subdued all will. She was the master of all life and machinery, and no amount of lasers and lives could stop that.

The command terminal blinked feebly as a damaged AI attempted to self-destruct the ship. The screen flickered as software commands ran through unreceptive conduits. The computer gave one last try before it died in a defiant sizzling of wires, the screen fading slowly to black and a row of red-lit lights switching off one after the other. The ship's interior lighting failed seconds afterwards, and the engines shook as the fuel containment systems began to crash. Then the iron will of the Aparoid Queen asserted itself over the machinery, and it became her own. The lights went on, projecting a sickening orange light into corridors lined no longer with corpses, but mindless drones. Containment fields snapped back into existence, tinged with streaks of green and red, casting an evil glow about deserted engine rooms. Computers restarted, memories wiped and software corrupted. And then the ship made a smooth turn and leapt to warp towards the asteroid belt, where its master now directed it. Stars now passed by at great speeds, unnoticed by the unseeing eyes of a crew who had now paid for their lives of crime with their soul. Eerie screams echoed through the ship as some fought to break free, but these grew less and less frequent as the cruiser plowed onwards. Then they stopped altogether, and there was no sound aboard the ship but for the ominous clicking of mandibles and the tapping of crystalline legs upon steel decks. The aparoids were now in control, and there was now no hope for those who resisted them with their hopeless plans and pitiful defenses.

Everything in the universe belonged to them now.