Part 8
Krystal sat down on the bed and looked at the data reader and small stack of discs on her dresser. She picked up the reader and put the first disc in, it was footage of Cerinia just after the impact. The surface of the planet was covered by thick black clouds, she could see the land mass smoldering through the gaps. A human voice began,
"This is first officer Donald Sampson of the auxiliary cruiser Nagano answering HSF 3rd fleet command's request to investigate a massive impact on Becker1314 C. We've entered high orbit around the planet to begin observation..." The rest was details about the planet's atmosphere, surface temperature, it's density and lack of moon, as well as population estimates other statistics. The recording ended with the Nagano approaching Coreena Station and several small Cerinian ships. Krystal wondered what the Cerinians on the station must have felt seeing this unknown ship approach after such a disaster. She put the second disc into the reader and started the recording.
"This is first officer Donald Sampson of the auxiliary cruiser Nagano, we have taken the refugees from the station orbiting Becker1314 C and docked the few small vessels we found in our hangar. The surviving population is obviously traumatized but cooperative thus far. They're similar in size and build to the Cornerians in the nearby Lylat system but have different coloring, typically primary colors or combinations of 2 primary colors, this is in contrast to the more natural toned Cornerians. They've agreed to allow us to take them away from the planet and be resettled on a habitable world on the condition that we attempt to search the surface of Becker1314 C for survivors and any items of cultural value. I've assembled several landing parties and we're in the process of locating reasonably safe landing zones as close to the population centers as we can get. The amount of dust and debris in the atmosphere makes prolonged flight with any kind of turbofan engine risky, so we're picking target areas to drop into rather than skim along the surface." This recording had pictures of Coreena station and the small group of ships docked outside it. Krystal sifted through the photographs until she came to pictures of the survivors, each one had their picture taken along with their name and occupation if they had one. Most had a lost stare in their eyes, some were crying, some just looked on. She turned the reader off and looked at disc 3, this one was the start of the human's search for survivors. Footage taken from the dropships as they flew over the surface of the planet, documenting the destruction. It ended with the humans touching down just outside the ruins of one of the cities, Krystal could see thick plumes of black smoke coming from the piles of rubble, there wasn't anything that looked like a building. She inserted disc 4, her hand shaking.
"Sergent Vasquez, HSF special operations reporting." The voice was a human female, "We're on the surface of Becker1314 C attempting to locate survivors of a massive impact event that occurred here 3 days prior. There is very little of the surface that's safely accessible by foot, most of the planet is either on fire or flooded with scalding water from the 200+ meter wave that washed over the coastal areas after the impact. Atmosphere is breathable for the most part but the high concentrations of ash and dust make prolonged exposure risky. I can't imagine anyone surviving down here but we managed to pull 3 out of the rubble today, all children. We've found plenty of bodies and have given them proper burial according to human custom. I hope it's enough for them, whatever culture or society these people had here is totally lost." Krystal skipped through the audio and looked at picture after picture of covered bodies, humans digging graves and the fields of headstones crudely made from bits of debris, each with only a number. There was the occasional picture of someone being helped from the rubble, just as scared to see their rescuers as they were to have been buried, but most of pictures were bodies and smoldering rubble. The 5th disc was more of the same, with a final count of survivors at 312, with 22 pulled from the surface of the planet. The sixth and final disc was concentrated on the impact zone and data regarding the asteroid. She looked through the endless charts and maps, speculation where the asteroid came from and how it managed to hit the planet. She stopped at a video, it was from the human probe sent into the system. The asteroid had passed near the probe some 2 days before it hit the planet, Krystal could clearly see a cluster of rocket engines embedded into the surface of the asteroid, the colors of Venom's army visible on them. She'd seen enough and made her way to the bridge to meet with Jack.
"Jack, I need you to send something to the CDF for me." she said as she walked onto the bridge. Jack was talking with the fleet commander about the mission they had just completed. Krystal could only hear one side of the conversation but listened in as Jack continued to talk.
"I'm happy with their first mission, things went better than I expected." He began, "No, the ADF did well against the Black Venom fighters. I expect the group to get better as they become familiar with the limits of their ships. I've got them prepping for the escort run, I don't foresee any issues, there's plenty of talent there. I understand, I'll keep the fighter on standby, it's docked in one of the hangars. If things get out of hand, I'll drop into the system, standard protocol, no survivors. I'd rather have a destroyer for this one though." Krystal stepped back, what was the destroyer and what did he mean by no survivors? Jack had finished his conversation and caught Krystal standing just inside the door.
"I thought I heard someone talking before." He walked toward Krystal. "Guess you heard what the plan is for the next mission."
"I came up here to ask you to send this image to the CDF," She said. "It's proof Andross was the one who destroyed my homeworld and I'd like them to document it. I did hear part of your conversation, I heard some things that worried me. The destroyer and your reference to no survivors, these aren't things I want to be involved in."
"The destroyer is a ship," Jack said as he walked to one of the consoles on the side of the room, bringing up an image of a ship. It was a simple hexagon shaped cylinder about 85 meters long with a cluster of six thrusters at it's back and an orange dome shaped protrusion at the front. There were four turrets on top running the length of the ship and four on the bottom arranged the same way, each turret had four barrels and what looked like a sensor cluster on top.
Jack continued, "It's designed to kill fighters, other small ships, and even incoming missiles or smartbombs. The guns on larger ships can't track the smaller fighters so a small ship with a big bomb or missile can be dangerous. The targeting system on each of the eight turrets can engage one target, track another, while acquiring a third. This means the ship can effectively engage and eliminate up to 24 targets at the same time."
"What a horrible weapon." Krystal said shaking her head.
"Next mission, you'll be escorting a freighter of some kind. If things get out of hand in Lylat," Jack said. "I will fly my ship into the system and help keep the escort going. If I'm reading the intel right, this is the last aid run into Lylat if the ship doesn't make it, I don't want this operation to fail."
"So you don't think we can do it?"
"No, I think you can do it, but if there's a swarm of fighters attacking the cargo ship you might not be able to take them out before they destroy the ship. I can help thin their numbers if needed. The no survivors protocol is for the enemy ships, I can't let them escape after seeing a human ship in Lylat."
"I'm sorry I didn't trust you." Krystal said, "I just wanted to be sure."
"It's no problem, I think it's a good thing. You show you've got a heart in this as well as your head, you're not just out here for the credits. That's not something I'd have expected from you when we first met."
"This is who I am." she said. "What you saw before was someone different, you helped break the cycle of guilt and anger I felt for so long. The reason I came up here is there's something I wanted to talk to you about, away from the others."
"Go ahead." Jack sat down in the captain's chair looking out over the front of the ship. Krystal sat down in one of the nearby chairs, being careful not to touch the consoles that surrounded it. She looked around the room then back to Jack and spoke.
"What does Miri do here?"
"Honestly, nothing." He said. Krystal was surprised by his abrupt answer.
"She doesn't handle the logistics on the ship? Like you told the others."
"She does, but what is there to do other than push a button when we need to stock up on raw materials or reorder food stocks when we're docked? She can't do anything, she was a laborer on a farm for most of her life and has no developed skills beyond what a basic education gave her. I'm trying to help her along and show her things when I can, finding time is difficult though."
"I imagine it is." Krystal looked around the bridge. "Maybe I can help you."
"If she found out I told you, she'd be heartbroken, it's not something she's proud of. I have tried to make her understand that her situation is not her fault, but she doesn't listen. She's smart and a very fast learner, whatever she decides to do, she will be good at."
"So what do you plan to do with her?" Krystal began prodding. "She says you don't have any kind of relationship, and you don't have a use for her on the ship. So why keep her around at all."
"Until I can get her trained enough to function in society, she can stay here on board." Jack turned and faced Krystal. "She's free to go anytime she wants, the same as the rest of you. She's taken advantage of that freedom once and I'm sure she will do it again. You should get some rest, I'm putting the ship in orbit and turning in myself."
"She cares about you. I think she's upset you don't show it back to her."
"I'll outlive her by almost another lifetime." Jack said. "She'll age and die and I'll be just the way I am now. If someone was to find out she was close to me, they could harm her to get to me, that makes her a distraction and a liability. I'm helping her the same way I helped you, nothing more."
"You're making excuses." Krystal stood up and walked toward the door. "It's not doing either of you any good. I have no idea why you'd be so afraid. If she's here, she's safe and I have no doubts you'd keep it that way. Be someone she can truly trust, it may help her like it did me."
"I can't explain it to you right now, just leave it alone. I'm putting the ship in orbit and turning in." Jack said as he turned back toward the ship's controls. "You should do the same."
Krystal walked off the bridge and back toward her room on the crew deck, everyone had gone to sleep and she decided to do the same. She walked over to the bed in her room and pulled the sheets back, there was a knock at the door, it was Miri.
"I heard part of your conversation with Jack." Miri said. "I can't believe he told you."
"I had heard something I didn't like, I wanted him to explain it."
"That wasn't part of it though." Miri said stepping into the room. "You know about me."
"It's nothing we can't work through." Krystal said, "I'd have never known if Jack didn't tell me. We can help you too Miri."
"Oh yeah." Miri leaned on the wall, her arms folded. "I could really see Katt helping me out. I don't think the other two would take time out of their busy day to bother with me."
"Fox and Falco are good people, they really are. Katt just picked a bad subject to talk about, I'm sure she meant well by it. Jack told me some things about you, but there was more he said I'd have to hear from you if I wanted to know." Krystal sat back on her bed. "I'm trying to get Jack to open up a bit."
"Jack doesn't open up." Miri said, walking over to the bed and sitting down next to Krystal. "You obviously spent some time with him, you've seen how he is."
"I...I'm not sure I should be talking about this with you." Krystal looked at the floor. "You might not want to hear it."
"I left, whatever happened after that wasn't my concern." Miri put her hand on Krystal's shoulder.
"When I met Jack." Krystal began, "I was being held captive at gunpoint and I'm sure just a few moments from being shot. Jack killed my captor, got me out of that place, repaired my ship, fed me, gave me a place to wash up and rest, and didn't ask for a thing in return. I was nasty to him, it was the only way I knew how to be. He just brushed it off and continued on. Eventually, I snapped out of it and started to feel like my old self again. After he drove off the squadron that had been hunting me I thanked him, put my arms around him, and looked him in the eyes. I've never seen a creature as sad and burdened as he was then. I told him he gave me something to look forward to."
"And?" Miri interrupted.
"That's all, you were here for the rest. We went on to find Fox and now that I'm flying with him again, I'm happier than I have ever been."
"Jack liked to tell me that he's trained to do the right thing, no matter the personal cost." Miri said. "He says friends and family are a liability. I guess I believe it now."
"That was why I came looking for you." Krystal pointed at the dresser in the room. "He's got a dresser in his room with pictures of you and him on top of it." Miri became uneasy when Krystal mentioned the pictures. She stood up and started walking out of the room.
"I'm not sure what to make of that. I know what you're trying to do, and I should probably just come out and say it now." Miri put her head down as she spoke. "I don't like Jack, I never have."
"What?" Krystal was stunned. "After everything he's done for you, how can you say that?"
"I don't ask for any of it, so it's not like I really owe him anything." Miri said coldly. "I wasn't a farmer abducted from a colony like I told Jack. I'm a material buyer for a large Cornerian based corporation, hijackers attacked our ship while I was making trip to inspect a new claim found on Papetoon and took me hostage for ransom, the company didn't pay them. I traveled with them getting tossed from one cage to another. Sometimes beaten, sometimes starved. I lost my eye when one of them tried to get too close, he swiped at me with a blade of some kind when I kicked him in the head. Their doctor, if you could call him that, didn't even try to save it. Jack came along a couple of weeks after that, he butchered the lot of them. You should have seen it Krystal, absolutely horrible what that creature can do. Anyway, I didn't want him to know who I really was, I wasn't sure if I could trust him. He seemed sympathetic to my story so I ran with it, and he got me out of there."
"You're unbelievable. What about on Io station, and your speech to Katt?"
"I'm not going to let anyone put him down like Katt did, that was just uncalled for. When we met on Io, I was in a really bad situation. It wasn't all an act, I really was desperate to get out of there. You came in and when you pulled out that transmitter or whatever it was I knew he'd come back for me."
"But you had that pendant."
"Yeah, what about it? Want to know a good way to keep a bunch of lonely, human hating crewmen from pestering you for a night together? Show them some of these pictures." Miri pulled the pendant out of her shirt and spun it on the necklace as she showed it to Krystal. "It doesn't work with everyone though, as you've seen. Krystal, I've got a husband back on Corneria that hasn't seen me in years and doesn't have a clue what happened to me. My future isn't out here in space, it's back home on Corneria with my family."
"I don't know what to say. I never expected this from you." Krystal struggled to make sense of what she was hearing.
"Don't say anything." Miri grabbed Krystal's arm. "I mean it, not a word to Jack or anyone on this ship. Want to get off this deathtrap and back to Corneria. I don't like being out here."
"I can't keep quiet about this." Krystal told her. "I won't."
"I bet you have a pretty checkered past, don't you?" Miri looked at Krystal with a cold smile. "Wonder what Fox would say if he found out the dirty details."
"Fox knows everything that I have done in the time we were apart, I didn't hide anything." Krystal said defiantly.
"He doesn't know what I'm going to tell him. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it will put doubt in his head. I'll be watching you." Miri said as she walked out the door.
"Likewise." Krystal responded as she shut the door and turned out the lights. Night passed on the Prospect without incident and the group had made their way to the ship's mess hall to get a much needed meal. The ship's mess was a large plain white room with a programmable food dispenser on one wall, a grey colored sectional sofa along another, and a circular table in the center. As the group sat down and ate Falco broke the silence.
"So what do you think the next assignment is?"
"I don't know," Fox said. "We'll know soon enough."
"Good to see you're all awake." Jack's voice came over the ship's intercom. "Meet me in the forward hangar whenever you're ready."
"How does he know where we are?" Katt asked.
"The ship had sensors all over that track movement." Miri told her. "It's for security."
The group made their way to the ship's forward hangar where their ADF fighters were docked. As the door to the hangar bay opened the group was surprised to see their own ships in place of the ADFs, each ship was polished to a mirror finish and had on it's red colored wing tips what appeared to be the old Star Fox logo in silver surrounded by a blue ring that was similar to the jump portals they used to enter Lylat. Jack spoke as the group walked around the hangar, inspecting their ships.
"What you're looking at are your new ships. They are the same ADF fighters you have been flying, but modified to look like your Cornerian ships, they still fly like the ADFs, the change is purely cosmetic. I did some thinking about what Katt said regarding the ship's appearance and decided it might help curry favor with the Cornerian public if the ships you're flying look like the ones you flew during the wars."
"What's with the logo?" Fox asked.
"The squadron needed a name. I went back and remembered a story about a creature that was so quick and cunning it couldn't be caught, much like you. I gave the squadron that name, Silver Fox."
"I don't know." Falco said. "We're not all about Fox are we?"
"The name is meant to remind the public who you are." Jack said, "They need to be reminded of what Star Fox did for them."
"I was calling my ship the Rusty Kitty, so I guess it's better than that." Katt said.
"I like it." Krystal told Fox, "It fits the team's new approach."
"Well, I guess it can stay then." Falco looked at Jack. "What's the next job?"
"Ever since the end of the last war in Lylat, the HSF has been sending Cornerian ships loaded with supplies to help with the rebuilding of the system. These ships are dropped into the edge of the system just like you are when deployed on a mission, this keeps the Cornerian public and parts of the CDF that don't know the HSF exists thinking that the aid ships are coming from settled colonies outside Lylat. The problem is the CDF is not strong enough to police Lylat and too many of the aid ships never reach their destination, they compound the problem by refusing to let us drop the ships right into orbit around Corneria or escort them ourselves. The HSF is not going to send any more aid ships unless something can be done to insure their safety."
"What's happening to the ships?" Katt asked.
"Small rogue factions like the Black Venom Syndicate have popped up in and around Lylat, they're mostly made up of former military pilots from Venom, CDF rejects, and people who've decided there isn't enough misery in the world and feel the need to create more. These groups have been hijacking the aid ships or outright destroying them in an attempt to extort credits and supplies from the Cornerian government and to a lesser extent the HSF. Obviously, we're not paying them and the CDF can't, so they keep hitting the aid ships."
"When do we get started?" Falco asked.
"The freighter is due any minute now, I'll be jumping you all in together. I'd get your ships fitted and ready to go, no human ordinance this time, it wouldn't look right for Cornerian fighters to have anything other than Cornerian weapons.
"Aww, man." Falco said.
The freighter arrived shortly after the Silver Fox team had taken to space, it was an old Cornerian carrier that had been modified to fit cargo containers, much like the Great Fox 2 had been. The ship's captain was eager to get into the Lylat and complete his run, he patiently waited as Jack opened the portal into Lylat and the small fleet began to move as soon as it stabilized.