Author's Note:
This is it, friends and neighbors, we're getting close now. THe culmination of everything I wanted this fanfiction to be. We're getting close to the last moments, the final conflict, the coup de grace. Read it, review it, love it, hate it, this is it. I've been working on this for almost two years, it's almost finished. It's all about this moment, right now.
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Chapter 10: Instability.
The Great Fox left hyperspace. Just as the enormous ship left warp space, the Star Fox team knew that something was wrong. They should have gated out a mere few kilometers from Area 6. Instead, they were quite obviously in the blood red nebula, Sector Z. Fox, who had just returned to the bridge after his last maintenance run on his Arwing, surveyed the area, then called on Rob to check whether there had been a malfunction with the Plasma Drive. Rob's mechanical voice answered.
"No abnormalities detected. As far as I can tell, we should have been precisely on target... unless..." Fox looked the sensor's over carefully. Finally, he noticed a tiny blip on the sensor, about the same size as would be created by a housecat floating in space.
"Rob" Fox ordered, "Give me an intensive sensor sweep of Coordinate 12x, 14y, 13z." Rob did so, tuning the sensors and shipboard cameras on that location.
There it was. Appearing on the screen was a small device. It was emitting a Hyperspace signature, which would cause any ship attempting to jump to venom via hyperspace to misjump, and by quite a margin, apparently. Suddenly, A siren blared across the bridge, and Rob's voice blared over the Intercom.
"Warning, warning, hostile energy signatures detected in close proximity, warning..." It continued in this way for quite some time, but Fox tuned it out. Instead of listening, he barked a few quick orders over the bridge.
"Rob, take us twelve kilometers higher, we need a better view of the nebula. Star Fox team, to the Arwings!." He leaped down from his seat, and the four pilots ran full tilt toward the hangar.
By the time the Arwings launched, the Nebula was littered with androssian fighters. The small, insectlike kind that Fox and Falco had unanimously declared their least favorite type of enemy fighter, because they died faster than the Arwings could fire. The four arwings spread out of their formation immediately after launch, each one covering a side of the Great Fox. Fox was on the right side, falco the left, slippy the top, and peppy the underside. As always, the Androssian fighters exploded in one or two shots, making them no match for the arwings whatsoever. As suddenly as they had come, the small fighters beat a hasty retreat.
"The hell?" Falco asked over the radio, having never seen Androssian fighters retreat like that. Rob came over the radio once again, this time with a heads-up display of a large, cylindrical object that seemed to be moving at quite a velocity.
"Multiple missiles incoming from the port and Starboard side, damage estimate for impact exceeds 20." This was Rob's way of saying that if even one of them got through, the Great Fox would almost surely be out of commission for a long while.
Fox jammed the throttle of his arwing foreward, Barreling toward the incoming missiles. Falco did likewise, aiming for the opposite side as Fox. Fox tried to destroy the first missile by way of frontal assault, but quickly found that these warheads shrugged off most laser damage. He blew past the missile, and made a quick, sweeping U-turn which brought him directly behind the missile. Punching the afterburner to full to ensure that he would get past the missile before it exploded, he jammed a Nova bomb up one of its engines. The missile exploded with a colossal, blinding light. On falco's side, another missile went down. Slippy and peppy continued to mop up the remaining fighters, most of which had returned along with the missiles.
As fox was dealing with a third missile, Rob once again came over the radio. "Warning, Several hostile soldiers have boarded the Great Fox, they are attempting to hack into the main computer."
Fox rolled his eyes, then left Slippy, Peppy, and Falco to deal with the rest of the missiles while he returned to the ship to deal with this new problem. He entered the hangar as quickly as he could, parking the Arwing right next to the hostile fighter that had docked in the hangar. He hit a few buttons on one wall of the hangar and the enemy ship was forcibly launched out, without a pilot. Then, he slowly and carfully made his way back to his quarters, to pick up a few supplies. The hostile soldiers must have gotten to the bridge and forgone leaving guards near the hangar. Idiots.
Fox entered his quarters, and grabbed a second power clip for his blaster, as well as picking up a two foot long, somewhat curved sword, which he found useful for starship boarding actions. As he left his small quarters with his supplies, he held his radio to his mouth, having set it to broadcast over the ships intercom.
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Outside, the battle was going rather well. Between Falco, Slippy, and Peppy, all of the missiles were being quite quickly dispatched, to say nothing of the enemy fighters. Peppy was worried, though. The situation inside the Great Fox was very likely to get very bloody, very fast. He didnt doubt, of course, that Fox was more than capable of handling the situation on his own. On the contrary, that's precisely what he was afraid of.
Fox crept through the ship's cramped hallways, one hand on the hilt of the sword, the other inching ever closer to the handle of his blaster. He looked cautiously around the corner, and saw an anthropomorphic lizard. He looked large, scaly, green, and full of bad news. The lizard looked around the corridor and then turned around again. Obviously, he had been sent back into the corridors to find the source of the earlier disturbance. Well, his back was turned now. Fox held his sword tighly, lest it rattle and alert the soldier to his presence. He wouldnt be using his blaster just yet, it made too much noise. Fox could be very, very silent when he wished to be. The lizard didnt even think to look behind him intil is was far too late. As he began to turn, Fox unsheathed the sword and attacked int he same, fluid motion.
The Lizard fell to the ground as the terribly sharp weapon bit through scale, then muscle, then bone. The lizard's lungs were slashed open and his spine severed. He fell to the ground in a heap, but Fox noted a tiny bit of breathing still occuring. he plunged the weapon down again, severing the unfortunate soldier's head. Fox shook the blood off of his blade, and then stared down at his right hand, the hand that wasnt holding the weapon. His palm was nearly covered with the blood that had sprayed as he sliced the lizard open. Taking a deep, calming breath, he shook the blood off his hand.
He crept toward the bridge, and as he did, he could swear that there was a voice, calling to him. It wasnt anything the voice said, but rather the voice itself that seemed to drive him mad. His hands shook, his teeth clenched, his lip curled into a sneer. There, in the corridor just a few steps from the door to the bridge, were the enemies. Rob had obviously sealed off the bridge, and this was obviously causing them a bit of trouble.
"Hey" The voice said softly, gently, almost as though talking to a child. "Hey" It said again. Fox looked down the corridor at them, for their backs were turned to him as they worked on the sealed door. There were four of them. One was a tallish striped catlike creature, one was an Avion like Falco, one was some sort of simian, and the last was a dog that looked rather a bit like Bill.
For a moment, though, they all looked disturbingly like...
"Hey" The voice said again. Fox couldnt stand it, couldnt bear to hear this voice now. Forgetting any semblance of stealth, he charged the enemies. They heard his footsteps and turned to see a blood covered, maniacal Vulpine charging them. One had the sense to draw his blaster, but Fox was far more used to the slightly less-powerful artificial gravity of the Great Fox, which magnified his natural agility even further. As he saw one draw his blaster, he moved his steps closer to the wall to one side, then, in a careful maneuvre, he ran horizonally across the wall, taking him a bit higher for an attack and throwing off his opponents' aim. "Hey", said the voice again, "Are you listening?" He leapt off the wall and plunged the sword through the Avion's chest.
"Fox" Said the voice again, and Fox turned the impaled Soldier so that he was between Fox and his enemies. At that very moment, his enemies opened fire. The unfortunate Soldier shook violently as perhaps five blaster shots riddled his body.
"Fox, are you really listening?" The voice asked. Fox threw the torn body of the Avian onto the floor at the same time as he drew his blaster and put a shot through the simian's head. Blood splattered onto the wall behind as the simian fell like a sack of potatoes.
"Fox" said the voice again. "I... " Fox screamed in animal fury as he fired two more shots, each through a side of the Dog's chest, and he too hit the floor.
"Fox... I love..." Fox screamed again, and the catlike soldier readied for a shot, or tried to. He was trembling all over. The creature before him seemed more like a vengeful ghost, more like an untouchable spirit than a mere mortal. This blood covered Vulpine filled him with terror. Before he could get a shot off, the sword flashed through the air in a quick arc, taking with it the forearm that had been holding the blaster. Now it was the Cat's turn to scream.
"Fox, I love you." The voice finished at last, as Fox plunged the blade through the Cat's throat. He just left it there as the Cat fell to the ground. Fox slumped against the nearest wall, looking around at the bodies and the bloodstained floor. He held the left side of his head for a moment, then got up and ordered ROB to open the door.
The rest of the team parked in the hangar, having destroyed the last of the missiles and mopped up the last of the enemy fighters, as well as destroying that pesky jamming device. The three of them headed to the bridge, stepping over the corpse of the Lizard with a worried glance at each other. When they came to the last corridor before the bridge, Slippy held back a convulsive urge to vomit. Peppy held a paw up to his mouth, and even Falco seemed a bit disgusted. The three of them walked onto the bridge, where Fox sat in his chair, toying with his blaster.
"Hi guys." Fox said, "Sorry about the mess." The three of them just looked at each other. Fox looked bad. Really bad. His fur was matted and covered with blood, his uniform was soaked in blood and sweat, his flight helmet was the only part of him that was almost untouched by the blood. Fox looked around the bridge, his eyes seeming to order every one of his team back to their stations. "Rob, get a cleaning robot on the mess outside, and put in the coordinates for our jump to Area 6." He looked around at his team, as they worked to at their individual stations in silence.
Then, he decided he probably needed a shower.
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How is it? Do you hate it? do you love it? I dont care which it is, I want to know!