7
Fox was sweating. He never recalled sweating in the cockpit of an Arwing before. The ship had a fully pressurized and temperature-controlled cabin, meaning that it was always comfortable inside, the reason he never had to wear any bulky flight suit or a self-contained helmet. But he sure was sweating now, and he was almost praying that it wasn't a bad sign.
He couldn't afford to be nervous. Not him.
The wall of ships was getting closer, in fact a lot closer. The three Arwings had piled on the coal, going to max speed in an attempt to catch up with the fleeing mobile suits. In essence, they were speeding right into the entirety of the enemy fleet, head first.
But at least they had speed.
Fox's shields had recuperated by this time, slightly at least. He could survive a shot or two, but not much, so he'd have to watch for that as well, among everything else. Nobody ever said flying in a war zone was easy.
The distance meter on his scanner dropped exponentially, reporting that the enemy fleet was now within half a kilometer. As expected, they put on quite the welcoming party, sending a rain of red lasers towards the Arwings so much to the point of blotting out the Sector Y nebula.
Dodging one blast and barrel rolling through another, Fox steered his fighter through the hail. "This is some heavy stuff," he said over the channel, "Maybe we can soften them up a bit for the fleet."
"Right, I'll take care of everything above," Falco responded, pulling up so that he could skim over the surface of the fleet and pepper it with laser fire.
"Uh, Fox?" Slippy radioed, still hugging his leader's wing as best as possible.
"On my wing, Slip, we'll go under them."
Fox pushed forward on the yoke, sending his ship down through the barrage and just managing to get in under the first ship before they collided. The massive gray forms jetted overhead, occasionally offering a break in the line which let the yellow light from the nebula shine through.
While still dodging enemy fire, Fox let his crosshairs pass over the hull of a Dorisby and he opened fire. The green lasers harmlessly danced about its shields, one even reflecting off completely only to impact on another nearby ship.
Damnit, Fox cursed in his mind as he rolled to the left to avoid fire from the same frigate, These guys haven't been on the front for awhile, and they're in good shape. We can't take them down by ourselves. Captain Kadel's foolishness became all too apparent.
An Invader I swooped down right in front of him, firing off wildly in a vain attempt to hit the speeding Arwing.
But we can still stop these guys.
Fox allowed himself a grin for a moment before he snap-rolled to the left, placing the enemy fighter dead in his sights. With the slight tap of a finger, the Invader was no more, the laser boiling through the pilot's compartment which left the side pylons to spin away aimlessly.
He barreled through the fireball, his shields easily withstanding the force and heat of the nova.
"Fox, looks like we have company…"
"Get this guy offa me!"
Falco and Slippy radioed at nearly the same instant, making Fox pause for a second just to understand what they both said.
"What's up, Falco?" Fox said into his headset as he pulled back on the throttle, throwing his Arwing backwards and past Slippy's craft.
"Fighters and fighters and more fighters, oh my!" Falco responded sarcastically, "These guys aren't a problem, Fox, I'll handle it."
Fox ended up braking right into an enemy fighter, one of three which were tailing Slippy this whole time. He bit back a curse as the shock threw him forward and brought his shields down to pitifully low strength. At the same time the Arwing's shields ended up frying the enemy fighter's nose which happened to include its cockpit, knocking one pursuer out unintentionally.
Jamming the right foot pedal and pushing up on the throttle, Fox got in behind the two remaining Invader Is which were busying themselves by playing target practice with Slippy. Switching over to dual fire, Fox raked the tiny formation from left to right and then back again in a show of extreme overkill. The two enemy units didn't even have a chance, coming apart after only the first few shots and exploding soon after.
"You alright, Slip?" Fox said in a rush before diving down to avoid a direct collision with a low-flying Dorisby.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," the frog replied.
Fox nodded to himself and broke to the left, dodging what could have been the hundredth salvo of laser fire from the capital ships flying above.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the enemy fleet was gone. Their bulky forms were wiped clean with a shower of stars.
Fox almost expected there to be more ships still cruising overhead, and found the prospect of turning back to nab more fighters promising, but he kicked the thought of his head and checked the scanner. The last blip which was tagged as a mobile suit drifted out of sight at the very top of the display.
No, we can't lose them, not now, Fox thought with derision at the idea of failure.
His feeling of defeat was pierced by Slippy saying, "There's something up ahead… Looks different!"
His eyes snapped back to the stars, only just noticing that Falco had formed up on his wing.
Dead ahead was some kind of luminescence, a blue glow that paled in comparison to the massive nebula to his right but still noticeable amongst the blanket of stars. His mind couldn't piece together what it represented, though it really should have by this point.
"Well at least I'll still get a chance to kill them all," Falco muttered over the squadron channel.
And then it hit him like a brick wall traveling at hypersonic speeds. The entire squadron of mobile suits, at least those that still survived, had formed up into a massive wall out in open space in direct opposition to the Starfox squadron. The blue glow came from all of their engines combined as the mechanical beasts surged forwards, head-to-head with the three lone Arwings.
He felt that knot again in his stomach, only this time it tightened all the way right off the bat.
Fox could hear a slight whine, which he assumed was coming from Slippy. He honestly couldn't blame him; this was insane.
"Any ideas, Fox?" Falco muttered over the channel, holding a position on Fox's wing. Even the cocky pilot wasn't ready to get smothered by a bunch of mechanical monstrosities.
Fox didn't reply. Or more like he couldn't. He was the leader, and he was speechless. His mind froze over, stopped cold.
"Well, Fox?" Falco continued, raising his voice, "Wake up, moron, we've gotta do something! Come on, mister 'Fearless Leader'!"
"Cut the chatter," came Peppy's voice, the tone sharp as a razor blade, "We'll think of something."
"Whoa, hey, gramps, how'd you get back here so fast?"
"Cut it out!" the hare snapped, suddenly very acute of his age, "I may be old, but this Arwing isn't!" His voice eased off. "Now then, Fox, get a grip. What should we do?"
For some reason, Peppy's calm request flipped some kind of switch, and something started clicking in his head. He recognized this feeling, this feeling of sudden understanding and decision. His father always told him it was a part of his instinct, a natural ability he'd inherited from the previous generations in his family. 'Trust your instincts' he would always say…
He started looking at the situation from a totally new angle, a broader angle that wasn't limited by the feeling of despair or the sheer numbers of the opposition.
The mobile suits, numbering nine at least, had formed a massive diamond-shaped wall formation in front of the Arwings and were closing fast. They expected to simply bludgeon into the enemy fighters, and if that failed, they could always gang up on individual ships during the ensuing dogfight and wipe out the entire squadron.
What the enemy expected was for them to simply crash into each other, head on. Fox scratched this out of his mental list of options.
They could break away, he figured, trying to outmaneuver them and flank them. However, in order for this to work, they'd need to split up. The previous fight told him that lone ships were entirely too vulnerable, meaning that Starfox would be free-floating vapor within the first five minutes of fighting.
He scratched that off of his list as well.
But now he was left with nothing, the same dead-end he'd stumbled into before face first. There was no conceivable way they could fight these mobile suits in open space, on their terms, with their formation and numbers.
Numbers. He repeated the word several times in his mind. Numbers. There were a lot of them, and they were close together. They looked like a wall, an unstoppable juggernaut.
And what could he do to take advantage of this?
Smart bombs.
That was it. It was the only way. A salvo of bombs with their targeting systems active could do severe damage to the enemy formation, forcing them to break up, if not destroy them completely, depending on how long they held their position while the sky lit up.
"Cut your engines, guys. Switch over to smart bombs," he said into his head set while typing in a number on the keypad which resided on the main console. "Turn on the IFF tracking and set to detonate when they come within ten meters of an unfriendly target."
"So that's our plan?" Falco retorted, "Throw a bunch of rocks at them?"
Fox scowled. "I'm open to any suggestions, you know."
Falco shut his mouth.
"Alright, aim for the dead center of that group, and fire on my mark." Fox's grip on the toke tightened as he moved his thumb up to depress the launch button.
The mobile suits got closer and closer, but still out of their own effective firing range.
"Fire!"
The four Arwings, all stopped dead in space and arrayed in a small diamond pattern together, unleashed a bomb each. Fox looked on in concern as the tiny shapes soared off towards the wall in front of them, totally ignoring the maneuvering thrusters on the nose of his ship while they worked against the recoil from the launch.
A small figure appeared on the console, and he spared a glance at it. It was marking the distance between the smart bombs and the mobile suits. The numbers dropped exponentially.
Eight-hundred meters.
Five-hundred meters.
Two-hundred meters.
The massive glow of the mobile suits' engines seemed to dissipate as they broke off in all directions. Not a moment later four massive flashes erupted directly in front of them, large contrails of energy lancing out in various directions, mimicking the shapes of stars.
And then the stars disappeared. And so did the mobile suits.
"Did… Did we get 'em?" Slippy said in a subdued and equally uneasy voice.
Fox squinted at the star field before him. A few tufts of yellow-orange gas could be seen where the mobile suits used to be. He started to grin.
And then a star was eclipsed for a brief second. And then another disappeared for a moment as well. The grin washed clean from his face.
"No," he radioed back, "Not all of them…"
"Oh, well that's just fu-"
"Slip, what are we talking about, number-wise here?" Peppy blurted out, interrupting Falco's curse.
"Uh," Slippy muttered as the sounds of a mashing digital keyboard could be heard in the background, "Uhm… Sensors report five unknown enemy targets, bearing four hundred meters ahead…"
"We've got company!" Falco hollered as his Arwing broke off to the side and gunned its engines. A yellow laser bolt lanced by where his ship used to be, nearly missing Fox's wingtip.
"Damnit, heads up! Break off!" Fox shouted as he instinctively jammed the throttle forward. A trio of yellow bolts greeted him almost immediately, one of them managing to catch what was left of his shields before he dove down to evade the rest.
Suddenly, Fox found himself head-to-head with three of the remaining five mobile suits, and worst of all he was alone.
Jamming down the right rudder while yanking back on the stick, Fox pulled his craft up and away from the enemy robots. He could see the yellow flashes whiz by on either side, skirting his shields by inches, if not even less.
"Shit! I can't shake this guy!" Falco nearly shouted over the channel. Fox paused for a moment, trying to comprehend that the jockey was actually outmatched for once.
"He's quick, be careful!" Peppy said in an urgent voice.
Curious, Fox released the rudder but kept the yoke back, bringing his Arwing around in a horizontal loop to the mobile suits which had stopped firing upon him. By the time he'd brought himself back around, the enemy units were gone, and in their place was an Arwing darting to and fro, narrowly evading the yellow lances from another robot.
But this robot was colored differently, the white panels slathered over with blood-red paint. Fox could only guess at why this was so, but perhaps it signified that the pilot of the mobile suit was the squadron commander. However, the different paint scheme made him stick out like a sore thumb, an obvious target.
Then again, if he's really good, it wouldn't matter if everybody's gunning for him, would it? Fox mused.
He shook his head; back to the task at hand. Falco's fighter jinked and juked back and forth with every passing second, flying through dizzying maneuvers in an attempt to shake the mobile suit ace who was tailing him. However, like Peppy had warned, the red robot was in fact fast, most likely equipped with better maneuvering jets than the average grunt, not to mention that the pilot was incredibly skillful on his own accord.
Fox had to at least get his attention, so he snap-rolled to the right and fired wildly in the scarlet enemy's path, missing every single shot but still managing to garner attention. The mobile suit fired off braking thrusters and came to a complete halt before spinning around to face the interloper.
His finger squeezed down on the trigger even as the crosshairs were lining up, but he was already too late. Before he could blink, Fox noticed the mobile suit invert itself and fire the engines on its feet, pushing it down at incredible speeds. Instead of breaking away or speeding up like he should have, Fox inverted his Arwing to take a look at the enemy below.
It was staring right up at him, gun raised and ready. An intense feeling of dread swept over him in that very instant.
A spray of green light broke the tense situation just in time. The red mobile suit was smacked in the back by two of the bolts, prompting it to flip around and bear its shield. Fox's eyes sprung up to spot the Arwing that was letting loose in what looked like all directions.
Is that Slippy?
The mobile suit brought its gun to bear on the new target and gleefully opened up, barrels blazing. Still spraying fire, the Arwing started to dip down and then broke to the left, dodging a few shots but still taking the brunt of them with its shields.
Yeah, that's Slippy. Fox frowned as he eased back on the stick, pulling a wide, vertical loop which would bring him level with the red mobile suit. The other Arwing pulled up and darted past, waggling its wings in an impromptu signal to "go get him".
Fox obliged, finishing the loop. To the robot's pilot, the backside of one Arwing was replaced with the front of another, a front which was now ablaze with green lasers. Fox tapped the trigger repeatedly. He kept the barrage up for as long as he could, but he knew it wouldn't be long enough; the shield that mobile suit carried was absorbing the shots like nobody's business.
And then the scarlet shield ripped to pieces, having borne the strain of so many direct hits over the course of its service that it could hold together no longer.
Fox could only imagine the pilot's face as the lasers stormed past the broken shield and into the visual sensors atop the robot's head.
The metallic cranium came apart slightly before a bolt sheared it right off of the body, cutting the visual feed to the cockpit below. But Fox wasn't done; there was no room for crippling in this war. He kept at it with a vengeance.
More lasers streamed in, dicing the mobile suit to pieces and burning off the red paint which adorned its now battered surface. A single laser found its way into the power core, detonating it while Fox's Arwing closed to a matter of meters.
His ship soared right on through the fireball, unscathed as it would appear. Fox didn't even close his eyes this time; he figured he must have been getting used to death-defying stunts like that.
But his shields were through with it. The main beeped and orthographic images of an Arwing appeared on the display, demanding his attention. Red outlines surrounded green Arwings. Worse yet, the outlines were blinking.
Damnit to hell! Fox swore within the confines of his mind, My shields are overloaded! Worse than simply being "down", the shield generator had undergone enough stress to simply collapse in on itself, overloaded, overheated, and basically destroyed. In this state, there was no chance for them to recharge while not under fire.
Fox felt a sudden twinge of guilt and sympathy. Just like the pilot he'd recently vaporized, now his shield was gone.
He shook his head, figuring that it was just another distraction that would get him killed. As far as he was concerned, he was stuck in this along with his comrades, so he had no choice besides continuing the fight.
His Arwing kept flying forward, distancing itself from the furball between the Starfox ships and the Venomian mobile suits. After he'd cleared half a kilometer, Fox hit the right foot pedal and brought his fighter around to head back in. He took the time to check in with his squadron and get a report on the fight.
"Falco, here," the bird responded almost immediately in his characteristically cocky voice, "These guys are nothing. I already vaped two of 'em."
"Peppy, I'm ok. Managed to nab one myself."
"Slippy, here, I took a few hits but I got one!"
Fox sighed in relief; the remaining units of the mobile suit squadron had been wiped out, meaning that, even though their carrier ship was still at large, it served no purpose since its primary function now existed as some free-floating debris.
"Uhm, Fox," Slippy piped up. The worry in his voice came through nice and clear over the channel.
"What's up, Slip?"
"I'm detecting a capital ship closing in, bearing mark two-seven-zero, on my nose." Fox brought himself around to face in the same direction, but he couldn't see anything amongst the stars and the haze of the nebula.
"Distance?"
"Eight kilometers… And closing fast…" Slippy's voice trailed off. Fox noticed that annoying knot in his gut again; it hadn't gone away even after the robots were eliminated.
"Fox," the frog abruptly continued, "That's the Saruzin!"
"Heh, are they crazy or what?" Falco piped up. "Without its little garrison that thing is as good as slag. Let's hit the thing and get it over with."
"No, wait," Fox said into his headset, "Even if it is just one ship, we're still only four snub fighters. I don't think we can handle it…"
"Then why the hell did we head out here in the first place?" Falco snapped back. Fox cringed, having failed at his attempt to further safeguard his team. Falco was right.
Was he being overprotective?
"Well it looks to me like it's fair game, Fox," Peppy said, breaking the momentary silence, "I say we go for-"
The channel began to crackle and hiss, prompting Peppy to stop mid-sentence. A short burst of static broke the cacophony for only a few seconds before the channel went silent again.
"Don't party just yet, punks…"
Fox's blood ran cold at the voice.
"It's time to try our new weapon…"
It didn't take him long to figure out what had happened. The enemy had decoded their transmissions and broken through to the channel. Not only could the enemy hear them talking, but they could talk through it as well.
Worse yet, they couldn't even change frequencies: if Fox told his team the frequency to change to, the enemy would get the same info and switch accordingly.
"Fox, our communications are compromised," Slippy started.
"No shit," Falco retorted.
Fox scowled. "Cut it out! Slippy, where'd that transmission come from?"
"Uh, the Saruzin it looks like… No wait… It came from in front of the Saruzin… Incoming!"
Something big and white shot past his canopy, the thrust of which buffeted his Arwing and pushed it off to the side. Fox instinctively broke to the right, even though he knew that whatever it was had already flew well behind him.
Kicking up the throttle, he soared back over to where his squad mates were milling around after they'd demolished the mobile suits. They formed up on his wings without even being told to do so.
Fox used the left rudder to bring his Arwing about to face in the direction that the thing went. "What the hell was that?" he asked, not expecting to get a definitive answer.
Peppy was about to say "maybe it was a missile" but Falco cut him clear off, blurting out, "We're gonna find out!"
Immediately the white shape soared back into view, flying at unprecedented speeds. With a bright flash of light it came to a complete and utter standstill, stopping just in front of the Arwings.
It was another mobile suit, but it was decidedly bigger in every way. The gun was bigger. The shield was bigger. Its engines were bigger.
And it was ready to do some serious damage.
"Run," the voice of the enemy pilot said in a mocking and unnervingly predatory tone.