Chapter 5: Covered Tracks

The chamber Fox and Scarlet found themselves in occupied the majority of the facility's space, measuring nearly one hundred meters wide and fifty meters deep. The sterile white industrial lighting from the ceiling exposed the sheer scope of the room, but its size was not the aspect that caused Fox and Scarlet to freeze in place.

Aligned in tight, clustered rows too numerous to count, an entire battle group of immobile Cerinian foxes stood in place, anchored to matching scaffolds outfitted with life support tubes that recirculated fluids through their systems. The groups were divided by fur color and biological sex, with blue and white furred males occupying the front right group, blue-furred females behind them, and matching white-furred Cerinians standing in place in the other half of the chamber, which was divided by a narrow aisle in the center. All of them wore matching lightly armored bodysuits, each with Asgard Industries' winged A icon printed on their chest plates.

Incredulous, Fox looked towards Scarlet. "Is this an entire clone battle group?"

The vixen nodded. "This is a lot more than I was ready for. I don't even know where to start with this, but we need to document it, now."

While Fox stared at the silent assembly before him and noticed a distant EXIT sign on the back wall, Scarlet began snapping pictures with her comms device, trying to document everything that she possibly could in the shortest amount of time. Fox followed her lead, trying to collect the clearest, most damning evidence of Asgard's closely held secret.

Ten seconds passed. While Scarlet continued capturing evidence, Fox heard the clap of boots at the door behind him. He immediately knew what was coming. "Scarlet, run!"

She did not need to ask why. The two sprinted into the narrow gap between the two massive Cerinian groups and ran towards the exit door. The door behind them slammed open, accompanied by the shouts of soldiers.

"They went in here! Don't let them get away!"

Fox refrained from looking over his shoulder and focused solely on the exit door. He reached it before Scarlet did, slamming into the opening bar with his shoulder and jarring the door open in one motion. The arid wind from outside rushed through his fur as he set foot onto a concrete walkway with a metal railing, only three feet above the pavement surrounding the building. Far behind him inside the building, he heard one of the pursuing soldiers shout into his radio, "Get everyone you can to secure the perimeter! Intruders are making a run for it from the rear exit!"

The walkway railing outside the door only allowed Fox to turn left, pushing him towards the building's western side. He sprinted across the low walkway, then down a shallow ramp where the concrete turned to asphalt. Reaching the back left edge of the nondescript building, he rounded the corner with Scarlet close behind him. He saw the sparse evergreen forest far ahead, across the asphalt lot shared by the Asgard facility and the other nearby industrial buildings. Large pallets of stones and building materials from an adjacent, unrelated building dotted the lot on the edge of Asgard's allotted space.

Recognizing the usefulness of the building materials as a source of cover, Fox darted right and ran alongside the pallets, all while glancing towards the Asgard facility every other second. Now, only fifty meters separated him and Scarlet from the woods. Entering the forested area would not put them out of harm's way by any stretch—the gaps between the trees still offered plenty of opportunities for an enterprising marksman to take a shot.

As soon as his boots left the asphalt and touched the faded pine needles at the edge of the lot, the burst of plasma weapons reached his ears. Red beams streaked past him from the building, hitting the ground near his feet and lighting small fires on the forest floor. Against his better judgment, he took a rapid glance at the building behind him in time to see both overhead doors at the front of the complex roll up and a squad of soldiers rush out. A group of eight raced towards the two parked SUVs in the lot in front of the building and climbed in.

Fox redirected his attention to the ground and the trees in front of him. The small cave where Scarlet left the rental SUV was not far away, although he feared that by the time he reached it, Asgard's vehicles would already be upon them.

Scarlet's frantic voice added yet another sound to the growing cacophony. "Fox, put down suppressing fire!"

The idea infuriated him—it struck him as insane to try to shoot back when running was all that mattered. Yet, he decided to listen. His counterpart's make-it-up-along-the-way strategy had worked so far, and for a reason that he could not define, he listened to her. Stopping behind a particularly massive tree, he poked out from behind his new cover and took aim at the building with his personal plasma blaster, as opposed to the suppressed handgun Scarlet had given him earlier. He fired at the area near the overhead doors, plasma bolts searing the side of the building close enough to the few soldiers nearby to force them to duck and cover.

While Fox diverted their attention, Scarlet reached for one of her leg bracers and pulled out a small, flat, brown explosive. She darted out of the forest towards the road, armed the device, and planted it on the road edge before racing back into the woods with Fox in tow. More plasma bolts reported from the building, but the distance between it and them continued to grow, and the fire became more sporadic. However, it was at this point that the base personnel started their vehicles and pulled out of the lot.

Fox and Scarlet stayed underneath the trees, slipping on pine needles with virtually every expedited step. Not too far ahead, they spotted the very top of the cave's opening. But as they drew closer, the headlights and searchlights of the pursuing military SUVs lit up the trees ahead of them. As Fox feared, they were not going to reach the cave before Asgard's forces caught up to them.

A sudden explosion bludgeoned the air. Fox looked over his shoulder in time to see the first SUV drive over Scarlet's roadside explosive and go up in flames. The vehicle following it frantically swerved and hit the brakes, but could not avoid slamming into the back of the crippled SUV.

Reaching the entrance to the cave, Scarlet ran into the darkness and pressed the unlock button on her key fob to turn on the rental car's lights. The two round headlights flashed for a moment, allowing her to see it in the otherwise pitch darkness. She wrenched open the driver's side door and jumped in, while Fox mirrored her and clipped himself into the seat next to her.

Pressing the start button, Scarlet switched the vehicle into drive and floored the throttle, the tires throwing dirt and dust into the air as the off-roader's electric motors screamed. She forced the steering wheel hard to the right the instant the cave ended, sending the vehicle up the adjacent red dirt embankment at a 30 degree angle, all four wheels desperately clawing at the ground for traction. The SUV crested the hill at speed, leaving the ground for a fraction of a second before slamming back down on the pavement on the other side with a vomit-inducing hop. Fox looked out the back window as several of the soldiers from the wreck emerged from the carnage and took aim at the rental car, but a sharp, descending turn in the road ahead put the vehicle below their line of sight.

Not relenting in the slightest, Scarlet planted her foot to the floor the instant she cleared the sharp downhill corner. The road continued its downward slope towards the desert highway, growing closer with every second. Finally, the single lighted utility pole at the service road's entrance appeared. Slowing the vehicle near the intersection, Scarlet rolled through the stop sign and abruptly turned right onto the highway—the opposite direction of The Oasis.

Finally back on the main road, Scarlet took a deep breath, her heart rate falling back to an elevated but manageable level. Although her expression and body language still projected fear, she forced a grin and looked at Fox out of the corner of her eye. "We did it, Fox. See? That wasn't so bad."

In response, Fox looked in his side mirror to make sure someone from the facility had not turned on to the highway after them. He then glanced at Scarlet. "If that wasn't so bad, then why are you shaking?"

Scarlet became suddenly aware that her nerves had not dissipated in the least.

Fox continued with a second question, "Why did you turn right? The resort is the other way."

Matter-of-factly, Scarlet replied, "I'm assuming someone had a camera on that intersection. If they try to track us down, I want them to think this is the way we came from. We'll get back to the resort eventually—it'll just take a while."

Fox leaned back in his seat and glanced at the vehicle's center console, which indicated a time of 10:45 PM. At the same time, Scarlet pulled her comms device out of her stolen uniform's pocket and handed it to Fox with a GPS road app opened. "Do me a favor and search for a self-service car wash. There are a few small towns down the road."

Fox recognized the need to wash the blood spatter off the side of the vehicle and did as she asked. A minute later, he found a car wash in a nearby desert hideaway via the app and set a route for it. He handed the phone back to Scarlet, who clipped it into her dash-mounted phone holder. "I noticed that you haven't been using this car's GPS. You blocked it, didn't you?"

"Absolutely," Scarlet replied. "What do you think I am, an idiot?"

Fox allowed the faintest smirk to make its way onto his lips. "Well, I wouldn't say your idea of walking into a secret military facility with no plan and no way out was a good one…"

The vixen responded with a playful slap to his leg. "Well, fuck you, it worked."

His voice implying levity but his question suggesting something darker, Fox asked her, "Seriously, if that's how you operate, how are you still alive?"

The question momentarily sobered her up. "I really don't know. But if I'm honest, I don't think I would have attempted that without you."

An uneasy look worked its way onto Fox's face. "I told you this kind of work wasn't my specialty. If you were expecting my record as a pilot to help on this job, you thought wrong."

"I know," Scarlet replied, looking at the road instead of Fox. "You having my back makes me feel more confident. That's what I meant to say."

"Well, I'm glad I could help," said Fox.

The two went quiet. As Scarlet's phone GPS indicated that they would arrive at their destination in ten minutes, Fox mused about both his present and his future. "Working with people who respect or even idolize me isn't new, but somehow it feels different with her. I don't really know much about her reputation, but she seems to have one in this system—a lot more than most ordinary mercs would seem to have. And it feels weird for someone like her to look at me that way. It's not a mutual respect like with most established professionals—she really seems to look up to me, and I don't think she does that with other people. She seems pretty independent and confident in herself. What's that supposed to mean?"

As the rental car's digital time readout indicated 10:59, the two reached the outskirts of a small exurb, the name of which neither Fox nor Scarlet remembered for more than thirty seconds. Following the GPS readout, Scarlet guided the SUV down a side street before reaching the open, lighted bays of an empty self-service car wash. She pulled the vehicle into one of the more distant bays where it would be unlikely to be seen from the main road and locked the driveline in Park.

"It might be a good idea to put your normal clothes back on while I clean this thing up," Scarlet suggested. "I should make you wash the car since it's your fault we had to stop here in the first place, but I'm feeling generous."

Fox took a quick glance at his stolen military fatigues and nodded. "What about you?"

Scarlet replied by climbing out of the vehicle and ditching her military clothes in short order. Rolling them into a ball, she tossed them into the back of the vehicle. This, of course, left her wearing only her black and red catsuit without the vest she wore earlier—a detail Fox became very aware of.

Scarlet smirked. "What did I tell you earlier about staring?"

Fox locked his expression in a frustrated frown. "I am not going to be able to get used to you wearing that."

"Okay, I admit this one is a bit more raunchy than most of my other ones. But we're in the desert—wearing the lightest one I had was important."

"You could have just worn a shirt and shorts like a normal person," Fox grumbled.

Scarlet looked at him with a teasing glare. "Do I look normal to you? Also, are you really complaining about this, or are you just trying to compensate for being a complete horn dog?"

Fox blushed, unable to form a response.

"Thought so," Scarlet chuckled. "Get changed in the back while I clean up the car, unless you think rolling back into the resort wearing someone else's military gear is a good idea."

Fox took her advice and climbed into the SUV's hatch area where he had stashed his own clothes. While Scarlet paid to use the wash bay and power washed the blood off the driver's door panel, he struggled his way back into his normal trousers and shirt. Pulling on his vest, he clambered back into the passenger's seat just as Scarlet finished removing the last evidence of their crimes and re-racked the pressure washer wand.

She opened the driver's door. "I'm getting a bit tired. You drive."

Fox sighed. "Fine. I guess it's only fair. What kind of range does this thing have left?"

"150 miles," Scarlet replied. "More than enough to get us back to the resort."

Fox nodded and climbed out of the car. While he rounded the front of the vehicle, Scarlet opened the hatch and pulled out the license plates to reattach. A minute later, she jumped into the passenger's seat and set a route for the Oasis, using a desolate, twisting back road that added 45 minutes to their travel time but kept them off the main highway for almost the entire return trip. By this point, both she and Fox assumed that Asgard's personnel had alerted local authorities to their shenanigans, although given the nature of the complex and the secret Cerinian clone battle group hidden inside, they also wondered if Asgard would try to keep the episode quiet as not to attract additional attention to the facility.

Trying to stay awake and alert on the otherwise uninteresting drive through Saijivo's desert back roads, Fox glanced at Scarlet and asked, "When are you going to return the car?"

"Tomorrow morning, right before I get off this dustball. I'd love to do it tonight, but they told me they don't like after hours rental returns. They said they've had too many experiences with offworld customers returning the vehicles with crash damage and then leaving the planet before anyone at the rental agency could document it."

Fox thought of the obliterated tire in the back of the vehicle. "Makes sense. If you don't mind, where are you going after this?"

The vixen looked at him with what he saw as a faint sense of longing. "I'm going to head back to Skallis." She paused for an uncomfortable second, then added, "You know, if you want to keep the adventure going, you're more than welcome to come with me. Asgard is definitely up to something with those clones. Felix is going to want to follow up with this."

"I'll consider it," Fox replied. "Work in the Lylat System has really dried up recently."

"There's no shortage of work in this system," said Scarlet. "If you want to make money here, the only limit is your own bravery."

"And willingness to compromise your morals," Fox muttered under his breath.

Scarlet heard him. In a softer tone of voice than usual, she said, "You asked me why I do mercenary work, but I want to ask you the same question: why are you in this line of work?"

Fox hesitated for three full seconds, then admitted, "Mostly because of my dad. When he was killed, I took over for him. Picked up where he left off. I never felt like I had much of a choice. After all, he left me to pick up the tab on an 80-year loan for a battleship. This all happened right before the start of the Lylat System's biggest war in history, too. I had a team in place and all the equipment at my disposal, and Corneria needed me. I never really gave much thought to the morality of mercenary work. It was just something I had to do, and after the war ended, I didn't know how to do anything else."

Scarlet grimly nodded. "Well, you are very good at what you do."

"Thanks," Fox replied, his voice muted and lacking emotion.

Silence prevailed for three seconds before Scarlet forced an end to it. "But as I was saying, if you want more work, you're in the right place. The Ichtosian System isn't as organized and civilized as Lylat. Can I be brutally honest with you, though? You seem like the kind who'd be able to handle what I want to say."

Fox sighed. "Sure."

"If you're that concerned about morality, you should quit. Full stop."

Looking at her out of the corner of his eye, Fox replied, "Believe me—I've thought about it. But my alternative would be to join up with the Cornerian military, and I've never really been interested in that. I want the freedom to make my own rules."

"Yeah, because you're smart," said Scarlet. "Hey, it's not like anyone is forcing you to do anything really evil. You're your own man—you get to call your own shots. But you have to accept that as a merc, you're going to be living in the gray. It's something my uh…mentor drilled into me early on."

"They weren't wrong," Fox replied.

- § -

Thirty minutes later, Scarlet's GPS finally led them to the main highway back to Yaruit, and more importantly, the Oasis. Waiting for the sparse traffic on the highway to clear at the intersection where he had stopped, Fox turned the rental car back onto the main road in time to see the GPS indicate an arrival time two minutes in the future. As the resort came into view, his sense of nervousness increased. He looked at Scarlet, who, with little else to do, had closed her eyes and pretended to sleep even though Fox knew that she was every bit as awake and alert as he was.

"Cross your fingers and hope they don't check our cargo."

Scarlet opened one eye. "They won't."

"I can't tell if that's confidence or you just saying things," Fox retorted.

The vixen smiled. "And I won't tell you which one it is."

Rolling his eyes, Fox slowed down for the turn into the Oasis and crept up to the guardhouse that stood in front of the resort's tall, wrought iron gates. He pulled out his resort pass and held it up to a small scanner attached to a metal pole just outside his window while the guard inside the booth stared at him. A split second later, the gate rotated open with the sound of a motor.

Fox drove through the gate and let out a colossal sigh of relief.

"See, told you," said Scarlet.

"You know damn well that we got lucky," Fox warned her.

A faint smirk worked its way onto her lips. "Yeah, I know. But we don't have to push it any more. Let's park this thing and finish the job."

For returned a quizzical look. "What do you mean by that?"

"Recording a message for Felix and sending him the pictures we took, or just talking to him if he's awake. I don't think he is, though. It's 3 AM where he is on Skallis right now. I'll record that message in my room where it's more secure. You should probably be there, too. I think a video recording would be better."

Fox nodded. "So, when do I get paid?"

"Someone knows what's important," Scarlet chuckled. "We'll get paid as soon as he sees the message and approves it. So, probably tomorrow. And by the way, if you were concerned that I was going to try to cheat you out of your payday, that's not going to happen." She winked at him.

Fox smiled back at her, his tension relieving itself somewhat.

Following Scarlet's direction, Fox parked the SUV and powered it off. The two returned their equipment to their respective spacecrafts, then walked back into the main resort building and rode the elevator up to the third floor. Following the long walk to the section of oceanfront suites, the two reached Scarlet's door, which she opened with her key card. Once inside, the vixen took off her boots and walked towards the balcony, leading Fox through the force field partition that blocked the air outside from interfering with the climate controlled room interior. As the distant sound of the waves on the beach below reached her and Fox's ears, Scarlet pulled out her comms device and set it to its video recording mode. She placed the device on the thick sandstone railing overlooking the lake, then backed up and stood next to Fox.

"Begin recording," she spoke to the device. A blue light on the phone lit up, indicating the activation of its 3D video recording algorithm. "Hey Felix, got an update for you: we finished the job. Things didn't work out the way we planned, but we got everything we needed tonight instead of having to drag it out over two days. I'm going to keep it short because I know you're busy. Asgard is using the building in the industrial park to store a group of what we think are Cerinian clone soldiers—several thousand of them. I'll send you the pictures we took in a separate message."

She stopped for a moment before adding, "We got really lucky with our arrival time. Carache was visiting the building, and we overheard him talking some kind of 'rejuvenation of Cerinia,' whatever he meant by that." Her expression soured. "He was talking about this with a Cerinian named Neron Taero. You don't know who he is, but he was one of my biggest targets when I was a bounty hunter. He's a real tough customer—not someone you want to mess with. I don't know what business he has with Asgard or Carache, but that's another layer to this onion that we'll have to peel back. We got everything we could here, so I'm going to roll out in the morning. If you have any ideas for a follow-up to this job, hit me up. Asgard is up to something strange. Catch you later."

She walked towards her phone, but before ending the message, she turned to Fox and asked, "Did you want to say anything?"

Fox crossed his arms. "You hit all the main points. I don't think I need to add anything."

"Fair enough," replied Scarlet. Picking up her device, she ended the recording, edited out the post-message footage of her grabbing her phone, and uploaded the video. She turned around and held the phone at waist level, but did not lock the display or clip it onto her waist.

Fox tilted his head slightly. "So, how are you sending that recording all the way across the system?"

"With a relay method," Scarlet explained, "I uploaded it to the server on my personal transport ship. It's docked in the orbital station above the planet. Once it's uploaded, I can access the server remotely and use my ship's comms system to send the message." To prove her point, she brought her device back up to eye level, opened a remote client, and transmitted the message. "Done."

"Ah, I didn't know you had your own ship. I thought it was just the fighter."

Scarlet let out a subtle laugh. "Really? How else did you think I got around?"

"Never really gave it much thought," Fox replied. "What kind of transport is it?"

Scarlet slowly walked towards the balcony's force field divider, hinting for Fox to follow her back into the main part of the suite. "It's not a very impressive one, but it gets the job done. It has a few weapons, a hangar bay for my fighter, and a good enough life support system to run for a month without refilling the tanks. That's about it. It's cozy. I've been using it since my bounty hunting days."

Fox replied with a basic, rote response of the variety that one uses when a conversation has reached a point where there is no point in continuing it but when saying nothing would be perceived as rude. "Nice."

Scarlet slowly walked her way back to the middle point of the room, an equal distance between the entry/exit door and the balcony. The suite's pool stood to the left, and the bedroom area jutted out to the right, closer to the door. She exhaled and looked over her shoulder at Fox.

Perhaps sensing something, Fox asked her, "Am I going to see you tomorrow?"

Scarlet turned around and met his eyes with her own. "I have to return the rental car as soon as they open, so I don't really know. I'm still worried that Asgard might get the local police involved in trying to track it down. That's why I had you take the long way back here."

"Do you think we're in any danger?"

"Probably not right now," Scarlet replied. "I don't know how it's going to be in the morning. I'm honestly trying not to think about it. One thing at a time."

Fox opened his hands. "What's the 'one thing' for right now, though? Sleep? I still can't kick the adrenaline from earlier."

"Me neither," Scarlet admitted. "If I was completely out of harm's way in bed on my ship, I'd be about to have the best sleep of my life. But right now, I don't even see the point in trying."

"So, you're going to stay up all night and hope for the best in the morning?"

The vixen took a quick breath and looked at Fox with a shallow smile that seemed both forced and uncharacteristically nervous. Yet, in that nervous gaze, Fox noticed a subtle, hungry glint in her eye. She lingered for a moment, seemingly unsure of her own response, before she partially turned around and said, "If I'm not going to be able to sleep, I'm going to make the most of it."

She fully turned her back to Fox and walked in the direction of the door. While walking, she unzipped her sleeveless vest and draped it overtop of a hat rack near the entrance to the bedchamber.

Fox tentatively followed her towards the front of the room, his heart rate rising with every step. Part of him planned to thank Scarlet for inviting him to take part in the now-complete job and then return to his room, but another more persuasive part of him compelled him to stop where he was.

Scarlet turned towards him and took a step towards the bedchamber while moving her hands to her neckline. She reached her fingers inside her catsuit's tall turtleneck collar and pulled it downwards and outwards, stretching it around her shoulders, over her chest, down her torso, past her hips, and finally to her black-furred ankles, where she freed her feet from the garment, haphazardly folded it, and placed it on a leather ottoman in front of the bed.

She looked at Fox out of the corner of her eye, her red and light cream coat of fur tousled and matted from being compressed inside her catsuit for the past several hours. With her one main article of clothing discarded, she stood in front of Fox wearing nothing more than a gray athletic thong. Taking another step towards the bed, she linked her thumbs around her undergarment's elastic bands and stretched them outwards, then pulled it from between her legs and placed it on top of her folded catsuit. She climbed onto the bed and rolled onto her back with her head facing Fox.

Looking upside down at him, she smiled and asked, "Wanna play?"

Fox did, in fact, want to play.