A/N: I would like to thank LnCpl. Luke Tamaken, Comrade, and Vulaan Kulaas for your stunning reviews. This chapter would not have been possible to write without your help.
Badlander
Chapter 3: First Flight
Before Gideon slept, he silently prayed to whatever divine force governed the laws of sleep that he wouldn't dream, that his sleep would once more be as blank and peaceful as the cold emptiness of space. But when he closed his eyes that night after he landed on Corneria, his prayers went unanswered.
His breath quickened as his mind was assailed by images of the past.
The Warden beats the child for disobedience. The child escapes into a world of light that throws him back in the dark.
His heart raced and his teeth began to chatter through the cold darkness of the night.
The corpses lie on the ground, broken and cold, on a world that became a sun.
He awoke with a gasp and the memories dimmed. He gazed around his room. Much of his belongings from the carrier, U.S.S. Enterprise, the most decorated American ship in the War, lay in a cluttered mess throughout his new living quarters. He examined the space and determined that it was not much larger than his previous room.
Governments rise and fall, empires expand and decline, but militaries will always be militaries; no matter the species. He thought smartly in the blackness of the night.
He rested his head back on the comfortable white pillow and considered getting a few more hours of sleep before putting the Cornerians through a whole day of training, but the moment he closed his eyes, memories and horrific images once more began to filter through his brain and he woke up again.
What the hell is happening to me?
"I don't like it, General." Fox said as he gazed into the telescreen that lit up his dark room.
"Neither do I," the hound-general on the other end admitted, his voice taking on a somber tone, "but the Americans aren't going to be sending any troops to offset the Communist build-up on Corneria. At the very least their President let us keep one of their best pilots."
For a moment neither of them spoke, both considering more than most the future of their home world.
"It gets a little better," General Pepper continued, "the President put the human directly under my supervision, and I've given him a field rank of Captain."
Fox nodded hesitantly. "At least he'll have some sort of accountability," he replied unconvincingly.
"You don't like him," the general stated calmly, "I can understand why. Growing up in an environment like that changes a person, sometimes for the worst. But this man successfully fought the Axis aces of the Luftwaffe and Japanese Zeros in the same war. At least give him a chance. Who knows; he might surprise you."
That's what I'm worried about, Fox thought silently and sighed. The sheer ferocity of the human Axis aces had recently become a field of study at many Cornerian Military academies. He remembered watching videos of the strange American and British fighters clashing with the technologically superior Nazi fighters over the Atlantic Star Cluster and the highly skilled Japanese pilots of the Pacific Star Cluster.
"Well, at least we have another pilot to help us fight against the Reds," Fox allowed himself a moment of optimism. For the moment, optimism was all he had.
The general nodded in understanding. "I'm ordering the training of the pilots there at CADA to begin ASAP. We can't afford to go unprepared any longer than we have to, and I trust you to get the job done."
"No rest for the wicked, eh?" Fox replied, smiling sadly.
The old general returned the same somber smile. "After this is over, we'll all hit the Officer's Club on 5th. Informal, off-the-record. Drinks on me."
Fox smiled at the offer and rose from his comfortable reclining chair. "I'll go wake the others."
The blue vixen heard a knock on her door. Groggily, Krystal dragged herself out of her military cot to get dressed.
Ever since she shook hands with the human Captain Waller, she had felt horribly exhausted. Of course, such exhaustion was natural whenever she gained entry to another being's mind, but in this case the feeling was far more potent.
Her body felt like a meteor that had fallen through a planet's atmosphere and smashed into the hard surface of the world, leaving an enormous crater where she, the living meteor sat intact, unable to move, while the world crumbled to ashes.
What exactly did I see in that man's mind? She wondered silently as she tried sluggishly to get dressed.
When she had shaken the human's hand and gained access to his mind, she could make out no discernible sign that the human was even alive. But if that were really true, and there were no thoughts or emotions for her to analyze, then why did she feel so exhausted? Krystal wondered, and finished dressing.
The continued knocking on her door jolted Krystal back into her small CADA living space. She slowly walked up to the dark metal door before opening it.
An orange vulpine greeted her view. "Fox? What on Corneria are you doing here so late?" she curtly asked the dark figure, irritated at the interruption of her sleep.
"I'm sorry, Krystal," Fox said warmly and she instantly forgave him.
Krystal didn't know what it was, but whenever Fox did something stupid to make her angry, she found that she couldn't stay mad at him for very long, even in the rare occasions she wanted to. She gazed into his warm green eyes and waited for him to speak.
"I just got off a call with General Pepper. He says he wants us to get start training right away. He didn't say anything about what was happening behind the Iron Curtain, but I think something's going on."
The sleek, triangular Cornerian Arwing dominated Gideon's view. The wings, white and sharp, melded smoothly into the dark blue fins which jutted out on either side of the tailless cockpit. Aside from the central location of the cockpit, Gideon had never before seen a craft that looked so completely alien.
He walked closer to the fins and noted the silver-blue Cornerian logo of a gridded globe framed by a silver letter "C". In many ways, Corneria reminded him achingly of America and its idealistic views towards individualism and personal freedom.
Gideon, a creature who was himself for so long deprived of his own freedom, treasured the freedom of this new world he had been sworn to help guide and protect. To him, it felt as if he had been allowed to visit a world he instinctively loved, although he could never belong there, he knew. But he would do his best to protect it anyway, because, to him, it felt like he was defending his own home country to which he could not return. He was a creature caught between worlds, serving both, loving both, and rejected by both.
From what Gideon understood about Cornerian politics, the government was a federal republic, governed by a Cabinet of Ministers in a similar manner to how his own nation was governed by the United States Congress.
Like the citizenry of America and many Western nations, the everyday citizens of Corneria had the final say in how their government was run and which decisions were made. Under different circumstances, Gideon imagined that the Cornerians would have been a worthy adversary to any of the many totalitarian regimes that perpetually plagued human history.
But, lately, with the intervention of America in Cornerian politics, many of citizenry's decisions were ignored for the sake of economic and technological gains, Gideon remembered shamefully.
He shook his head and turned his gaze toward the energy cannons mounted on each wing. They were simple, humanitarian weapons, but they must have served their purpose well, for the Star Fox team was able to defeat entire hordes of Venomian and Aparoid craft that each possessed terrifying weaponry.
Still, he would have to see to it that the Cornerian craft under his supervision were equipped with more effective weaponry. But that would have to wait for now; he was here as a teacher, not a warrior, and his new students needed him if they were to survive the dark, crippling future that he was so certain was approaching them all.
"I see you landed okay," a woman's voice tuned behind him. His heart jumped at the surprise as he spun around and was met with a familiar sight.
The reddish vixen with the bright amber eyes surveyed him from a few feet away. In the distance, Gideon could make out the shapes of the Cornerian pilots dragging themselves into the large steel hangar in preparation for the first day of training.
"No thanks to you. You're the woman from the CADA control tower yesterday," he countered sharply, recognizing the alluring voice from his initial decent onto Cornerian soil.
"Oh, so you do recognize me. And here I thought I was just a damned dirty animal," she answered, and made a sour face when he ignored her.
"Look," she continued, "I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for the way I acted over the communications link yesterday. It was stupid, reckless, and unprofessional, and it'll never happen again."
He nodded, silently accepting her apology.
"That's it? Just a nod from the badass human soldier? No chewing me out for acting like an ass?" She exclaimed, her face red with frustration.
"Would that make you feel better?" Gideon answered, smiling slightly in spite of his irritation with the vixen.
"Yes!" she said before covering her mouth with her paw. He stared at her, mouth frozen half-open in surprise.
She shook her head and removed her paw. "I-I mean no. If you wanna live and let live, more power to ya," she amended. She turned to leave.
Not so fast, he thought silently, surprising himself.
"Wait," he called out to her. Sighing, she turned, registering him again with her bright amber gaze that radiated intelligence.
"Name and rank," he requested, suddenly lamenting the fact that he did not know the reddish vixen's name.
"First Lieutenant Hazel Bartlett," she replied seriously, the humor gone from her pretty face. "Sir!" she amended, "Ma'am! Whatever it is you humans call their male superiors!"
Gideon stifled a grin. He wasn't going to take the bait. "For now, Captain would be just fine," he said softly as he gazed into her amber eyes.
"Yes Ma'am! Sorry, yes Captain!" Hazel saluted smartly and grinned antagonistically.
Okay, now she's pushing it. Time to teach her a lesson.
"You'll fly on my wing today, Miss Bartlett. Gotta keep an eye on you or that mouth will get you targeted by every man, woman, and…" he paused when he caught sight of the toad Slippy wobbling towards a fighter, "thing in the sky who wish to maintain their sanity."
He turned to face the newly arrived Cornerians who were groggily drifting toward their Arwings, "Suit up, pick a wingman and get in a fighter; we launch at 0700!" he barked.
The cool, silent Cornerian engine hummed beneath her as Hazel ascended gracefully into the perfect blue sky above.
Hazel loved the sky, so peaceful and pure, devoid of right and wrong. Off in the distance, she could make out the thin cirrus clouds that grazed the heavens above. The warm blueness of her surroundings and the speed at which she soared above the distant, chaotic lands below made her feel like an angel.
The silence of her fighter's engine allowed her to enjoy it a little bit more. Then, suddenly, a dark rumble broke her silent reverie. She turned in her cockpit and looked on in wonder as the alien P-51 Mustang rose alongside her.
The giant silver-yellow fighter soared angrily into the open sky like a graceful eagle captured and honed for war. Hazel could make out the various weapons that adorned the beautiful hull like perpetual battle scars, detracting from the beauty of the otherwise graceful vessel.
She could scarcely imagine the ferocity of the human conflict which had warranted the need for such an overhaul of hellish weaponry, or, for that matter, the need for pilots like him. Her thoughts instantly painted the image of Captain Waller, the stone-cold American pilot. Despite her recent irritation with the enigmatic man, she found herself more and more drawn to the mystery that lay behind those distant ice-blue eyes. What tragic past made him into the man he was today? She wondered, and turned her gaze to the crescent sun rising on the horizon.
She watched intently as the Arwings and various Cornerian fighters from CADA each formed pairs. The human Captain had requested that each pilot pick a partner - or "wingman" - as he called it, to trail and follow.
Hazel heard the light beeping of her flight communications link as the relay station on the ground finished synchronizing communications between the various fighter craft. Together, they looked like a disorganized band of warriors defending a forgotten world, but she wanted, no, she needed them to have heart – to persevere. She wanted. She needed. She hoped.
While many of the pilots around Krystal were practicing anti-Soviet and anti-Cornerian maneuvers, Krystal was watching the horizon. Something was horribly wrong, she knew, but she didn't know what. For her, not knowing specifics was one of the most torturous aspects of having her ability. Often, her sixth sense alerted her to danger and allowed her to scan people's thoughts, but it would never do her the common courtesy of telling her exactly what was wrong, she lamented silently.
Part of the reason why she admired Fox so much is that he never needed such an ability to do his job and do the right thing. He had saved millions of lives with little more than an Arwing and a handful of helpful pilots, and he had done it all without special abilities. Sometimes, flying with a man who carried such a legacy made her feel useless, although she wouldn't dare tell Fox. He had enough on his plate already without having to worry about her drama.
Krystal flew as Fox's wingman, or wingwoman - whatever the correct term was. She followed him through the open blue sky as she watched the horizon around her. As she did so, she barely noticed the subtle beeping of her Aerial Proximity Scanner.
"Fox, are you reading this? I'm reading multiple blips on my APS," Krystal voiced over the communications link.
"I'm picking it up, too, Krystal. No info on the IFF. Slippy, can you give me any information?" Fox ordered, sinking back into his natural element of leading a fighter group.
"Scanning," the toad's high-pitched voice filtered metallically through the communications relay. "Dangit! I'm counting upwards of twenty Cornerian fighters heading this way. They're closing within striking range of their energy weapons. Fox - they're not ours!" Slippy panicked.
Just when he said that, a yellow blast of energy caught one of the Arwings center-mass, ripping the hull to shreds and sending the burning fighter plummeting down toward the ground below.
"All ships break collective formation! We are under attack!" the commanding voice of the human Captain shot its way through the communications link. "Stay with your wingmen and return fire!"
Under normal circumstances, Falco would have felt right at home dodging energy blasts in his personal Arwing II, but these new blasts were coming from craft that were similar to his own; were his own. And every life he extinguished today wouldn't be some heartless Aparoid bug or greedy Venomian mercenary. He would be killing members of his own home world, people who could have just as easily been his neighbors growing up.
The thoughts died down, as did his sense of humor as his body kicked into overdrive and rocketed his Arwing after one of the enemy Cornerian fighters. The pilot was experienced, Falco could tell from the way he was constantly evading Falco's ship, but not experienced enough. Falco closed the distance between the two craft, lined up his sights, and let loose a volley of green blasts which torn the enemy ship to shreds.
"They got Ritchie! Those bastards!" Falco heard over his communications system and he quickly surmised that he was hearing the enemy's communications.
If they didn't hate us before, the Reds sure hate us now, Falco thought silently into the chaos.
Around him, he saw a mass of Cornerian fighters firing energy bolts at one another, wounding each other, killing each other. Explosions rocked the sky around him as he zeroed in on another target and made the kill, sending the poor bastard smoking down toward the grasslands below, where he lit up like distant fireworks.
A large object flashed before his view, followed by another, slower object. Stunned, Falco craned his head and saw the human fighter, which looked more like a medieval weapon, tear apart an entire squadron of enemy fighters with orange energy blasts that incinerated the Cornerian armor. The Mustang emerged from the sudden mass of explosions unscathed and began firing at a new target.
I'm glad he's on our side, he thought silently, and rocketed toward his next target.
Hazel was having a difficult day. First, she had failed to get a rise out of the stoic human pilot, and had ended up getting herself stuck on his wing. She silently cursed herself for her lack of discipline. Second, the normally calm man who had assigned her as his wingman had suddenly become a demon once the unknown ships started firing, making it nearly impossible for her to follow.
The human P-51 Mustang rocketed throughout the aerial battlefield annihilating the enemy ships with its four energy cannons mounted on the fighter's wings and nose. She caught sight of an enemy Cornerian fighter closing in on her wingman, but she dispatched it before it could fire at him, earning a quick "thanks" as he rose to meet a new target.
She appreciated Captain Waller's instructions to always work in pairs. On her APS, she could see the enemy ships were quickly being singled out and eliminated, while the allied ships stuck together and covered one another.
Hazel was about to engage an enemy fighter that had drifted uncomfortably close to her when two bright yellow energy bolts whizzed by her cockpit. She could feel the sickly heat of the blasts penetrate through the glass as more energy bolts danced around her. Quickly, Hazel disengaged from the target in front of her and made an evasive dive toward the ground, flying faster and faster as her heart thumped harshly against her ribcage.
"I've gotcha, Hazel!" an avian voice blared out over the commlink and within moments a green explosion erupted behind her.
"Thanks Falco," she breathed a sigh of relief into the communications equipment.
Immediately after Falco's ship rocketed past Hazel, the fighter she had previously been pursuing began firing at Falco. Wasting no time, Hazel leveled herself with the enemy fighter fired a single green volley, scoring a hit on the enemy's engine. Within moments, the opposing fighter was engulfed in flames.
"Ah… heh, I guess we're even," the avian said lowly, his ego deflated now that someone had to save his life.
Gideon soared in his silver-yellow fighter like a demonic bird of prey hunting the enemy Cornerian ships which seemed to move unjustifiably slow in their attempts to evade him. So far, none had succeeded in doing so. His experience fighting the Luftwaffe and Japanese aces had more than prepared him for an advance scout of expendable pilots fighting a goddamned proxy war.
He thought nostalgically about how much strain the Nazi pilots in particular had put him through. Ruthless, cunning, and possessing unparalleled skill, the Nazi pilots used their technological superiority to their advantage as they gutted the Allied Air Forces.
The ships before him, however, were far less advanced and their pilots even less skilled. Their commanders had knowingly sent them to their deaths for the sake of minor intelligence, and it disgusted him.
He destroyed another enemy fighter.
What the Japanese fighters lacked in technology and skill they made up for in conviction. Their sheer force of will and brave, often suicidal tendencies lead them to take far greater risks under duress to gain the upper hand in dogfights.
The ships before him did not possess such conviction. They were pilots just out of high school fighting for a nation barely in its infancy.
Gideon annihilated another fighter. Another kid dead because of me.
He loathed the eventual day when he would come across professional military pilots who had developed sympathy for the Red cause and defected. That was where the real threat lay, he recognized, and there was not a single thing he could do about it. Such thoughts reminded him of General Robert E. Lee, an honorable, successful general who developed sympathy for the cause of the Confederate States back in the 1860's. Under Lee's command, what had once been a ragtag rebel force quickly became the scourge of the Union as it leveled the border planets of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. The walled Union capital, Washington D.C., shielded from orbital bombardment, was barely spared capture. Over sixty million Americans died in that Civil War. Gideon could only speculate as to how many Cornerians would perish in this one.
Fox sighted the enemy fighter down his own fighter's nose and opened fire, dissolving the opposing craft into a cluster of debris that smashed into the earth.
He turned his Arwing around and was greeted with a mass of friendly fighters. Every enemy fighter had been destroyed and now burned brightly in the grasslands below.
A general chorus of "We did it!" and the decidedly more humorously dramatic "I'm alive!" erupted amongst the surviving allied fighters. He shook his head. This was no victory, he knew, and those fighters were no aces. They were sent here to die, and we allowed them to do just that.
"Return to base, everyone. We have fellow pilots to bury," he crossly reminded them, and the various cheers stopped. He cursed himself silently for dimming the group's morale. As a leader he was supposed to encourage the morale of his troops, not discourage it, no matter what personal statements he might have to sacrifice.
The Arwings and other fighters of the CADA hangars returned solemnly to the ground which had bid them farewell that very morning. The pilots, quiet and tired, filtered out of the hangar and back to their beds, where some dreamed, others had nightmares, and the rest mourned the dead.
The procession was dark, but, the five brave soldiers who had perished in the conflict which would one day be known as the Battle of the Academy, were being laid to rest on the hallowed grounds of the Cornerian Military Cemetary. The loved ones, draped in black and teary, kissed the closed coffins before the soldiers' honored comrades lowered them slowly into their deep resting place, far enough away from the concerns of the world to peacefully slumber, yet close enough to the sky to dream.
Aside, the human Captain Gideon Waller raised the saxophone he had so long ago forsaken on the eve of the Second Great War. On the warm, bronze instrument he played a human hymn known as "Amazing Grace". The low, tragic notes mixed beautifully with the high, hopeful ones and the crowd gazed on, entranced, as he honored the dead.
In the distance, behind the Iron Curtain, in the formerly Cornerian city of Kaeto, the wheels of war began to turn.
A/N: So, this chapter was much darker than the previous ones (smacks head for stating the obvious). But it was a lot of fun to write, especially the dogfight. I didn't originally intend for the chapter to end on such a low note, but I felt that to continue it further would defeat the mood. Again, I would like to thank all of my reviewers for giving me such kind, helpful feedback. And, as always, if you have any feedback or comments on my writing, lay em' on me. You never know how influential a single review might be in the coming chapters.