Desperate Times


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Titania:
Hidden Unergound Compound.
Two Years Earlier.

Richard and Rachelle Cooney stood at the makeshift landing pad on the central island, with the old crumpled wreck of the starship Cerberus looming behind them. The two watched as a shuttle –it had no ID markings, but a garishly 'ominous' black paint job– descended down the overhead shaft.

Rick sensed his sister giving a subtle scowl at the situation; she didn't approve. Frankly Rick didn't approve either, but ever since LCI and the Lylat Union were summarily obliterated, options were limited at best. If only for survival's sake, they'd have to make these less desirable choices fare more than they'd done before.

Once the dark shuttle touched down and the engines breathed a gentle sigh, the people the Cooneys were expecting exited to meet them. First out was Agent Gillian Morrow of the CSB, strutting down to the two older raccoons like some kind of entitled duchess. She was flanked by one of her prized agents: a leering feline woman kitted out with an ostentatious array of advanced combat gear that'd make elite special forces soldiers jealous. Trailing behind was Alastar Korvyn, who looked far more meek in regular clothes, like he'd been plucked straight from the streets of Corneria City. Knowing Morrow's methods, she may have done exactly that on her way to Titania.

"Here," Agent Morrow stated tersely, motioning for Alastar to step forward. "I've brought mister Korvyn as requested, with all his hardware intact."

Alastar shuffled forward, glancing awkwardly around his unfamiliar surroundings, until Morrow's well-armed escort nudged him along.

"Good to see you again, Alastar," Rachelle greeted in a warm, welcoming tone as she stepped up with open arms.

"Hey," Alastar replied weakly; shaken, confused, apprehensive.

"Come on, lets get you settled in," Rachelle said as she guided him away, across the bridge toward the bulk of the underground compound away from the others.

"Wait inside the shuttle," Morrow instructed her bodyguard. "I'll signal if I need anything."

"Yes Ma'am," she curtly acknowledged, and did just that, leaving the two veteran spies to their clandestine business.

Once everyone else was reasonably out of earshot, Gillian Morrow spoke, but it was with a more emotive tone than she typically used. It was a courtesy the pale wolf agent reserved for only a select few, for those she deigned worthy of more personal attention, "I'll give you this much, old man: you do know how to tempt a lady."

"What can I say? I aim to please," Rick said with a dismissive shrug.

"Yes, that's what concerns me," Morrow replied with suspicion and scrutiny. "You claim you can acquire so much for Corneria, but the generous boons you offer no doubt come with extraordinary challenges and strings attached. I still need to be convinced this audacious proposal of yours is more than youmaking promises you can't keep. I'd hate to believe you're leading me on, trying to play me for a fool."

"Yeah..." Rick groaned, lazily looking up the entry/exit shaft. "The idea we have for final extraction is... ambitious, but it needs to be."

"Come now, don't leave me in suspense," Morrow insisted in a mockingly eager tone. "Tell me more about this ambitious plan of yours: sell me on it like the charlatan I know you are."

The older raccoon resisted the urge to roll his eyes, endured the discomfort, and laid out his plan.

"Getting all of us off Macbeth is relatively straightforward:" Rick began. "We'll fire up a little misdirection and panic in Venom Intelligence, throw shade on Connor in the process, then smuggle ourselves off-planet in Engineer-General Aster's supply chain to Titania. Once Aster makes his landing and sets his expedition loose, we'll break off and meet up with you here. The hard part will be dealing with Connor's ensuing manhunt coming our way afterward, with all the ugly snarls that go with it."

"And you're absolutely certain it'll be Connor Griffon that's sent?" the canid agent pressed, and added with emphasis, "with the Enigma?"

"Andross likes to enforce a perverted sense of poetic justice whenever his subordinates fail," Rick answered with a weary droll. "With the nasty egg we'll have thrown in Connor's face during our escape, Andross will 'obligate' him to clean up the mess he made, under subtle threat of far worse repercussions."

"Honestly, it seems a dangerous way to handle things," Morrow mused with mild criticism. "It's true Dr. Andross is neither spy nor soldier by trade though, and you've worked close with the fellow."

The older raccoon winced at being reminded of his ugly past with Andross, and buried his plethora of emotions in his words, in his work, forcing himself onward.

"Once Connor and the Enigma are on-planet, we'll arrange a fake escape and Trojan prisoner ploy," Rick hastily explained. "We'll drag the Enigma here with a slave-drive rootkit that Rachelle will integrate into Alastar's neural interface."

"And I'll finally be able to make good use of Kellam and Sasha to seize the vessel from the inside," Morrow added with satisfied pride. "I was starting to think planting him inside Venom might've been a wasted effort."

"If you can pull it off, that'll be a huge help," Rick agreed, but after a pause, he added with concern, "getting Sasha on-board for the operation will be dicey though. She's loyal, and proud, and not to Corneria."

"Bring Sasha to me, and I'll have her convinced in minutes," the canid agent assured with absolute certainty.

Rick made a mental footnote on this point, mainly about how much of a pain in the ass it would be to arrange everything, with so much extra prep-work and setup. It should work, in theory; what a loaded phrase 'in theory.' Nevertheless, the old spy kept these misgivings under wraps, and moved forward.

"Once the Enigma's been compromised and we have the ship under our control, we'll assume the worst: Venom will scrub the whole thing clean, by force. Since Aster and his forces will be on-site, the grisly task most certainly falls to him. We'll lure Aster's forces down into this cavern compound to feign a cornered last stand."

Rick made a quick motion to the surrounding compound. With only one major entrance or exit It could certainly be made reasonably defensible. Throw down a few barricades, a few weapon emplacements, and it'd practically be an outright fortress.

"That seems unnecessary and entirely too dangerous," Morrow protested. "Surely It's far cleaner to simply slip out under the Enigma's cloak before anyone notices."

"If only it were so easy," Rick said in a tired sigh. "Firstly: it's safe to assume someone as resourceful as Aster is gonna be able to track the cloak. Secondly: we need to convince Venom that the Enigma's been utterly destroyed, that their goal was accomplished in spite of the ugly setbacks. They need to think they've won."

"Yes, something you specialize in," Agent Morrow growled with familiar irritation, shooting a sharp glace at the raccoon. "So, how do you intend to stage the demise of a ship and crew?"

"That's part of why we brought you here: to show you," Rick answered, and started moving toward the crumpled shipwreck, motioning for Morrow to follow. "You might even appreciate it, having been part of Icerain yourself."

"Yes, I noticed the distinct Krazoic architecture on the way in..." the canid spy commented with mild interest as she followed Rick inside.

The interior of the wrecked vessel was a twisted, bent and buckled heap that'd settled many years ago. Many portions had been torn away, either from the original crash, or from perfectly practical salvage efforts. The two spies occasionally had to duck beneath a crumpled doorway, or clamber over a bit of debris, but the way toward the engine room had been made relatively clear for the project the Cooneys were working on.

"CSB classified records say whatever was here before was rendered inert, Thanks in no small part to you, and this derelict vessel's final sortie," Morrow commented offhand as she continued onward, sounding almost disappointed. "I suppose those records are wrong, as are most records associated with you."

Rick shrugged by reflex, but kept the slightest smirk of pride hidden from the Cornerian spy as he replied, "like all the best lies we tell: built with mostly truth."

They arrived at the entrance to what was once Cerberus's engine and reactor room, and Rick showed Morrow inside. The original deck plating below had broken apart and had long since been cleared away, revealing a far older floor of stone slab beneath, seemingly untouched by the trauma of the shipwreck surrounding it. In the middle of the broken chamber, where the stone tiles converged to a central point, was a vertical hoop structure of the same stone material, arranged like an archway, or gate. A few additional pieces of modern engineering and technology were arranged around the hoop's rim, some of which were tethered to some computer stations nearby, and other thicker cables were anchored to the dormant ship's main reactor itself.

"I'll assume this... contraption is your ace in the hole," Gillian Morrow guessed, eyeing the peculiar arrangement before her with growing interest. "What have you done?"

Rick had seen this damnable thing far too much for his liking, especially in recent months. He'd spent entire days buried neck-deep in the technical workings, which were largely both beyond his full understanding and full interest. Most of the time he was playing workshop-assistant to Rachelle, who had a far more intimate comprehension of the precise science behind the structure, and engineering she used to tap into it.

"Call it a dimensional rift, displacement gate, inter-spacial portal, quantum teleporter; pick your favorite buzzword," Rick rattled off almost dismissively as he paced around the thing. "It can do some other weird stuff, but most importantly, it goes to another place without having to go far at all."

"Please don't patronize me," Morrow said with a mild huff, while her gaze was still fixated on the assemblage. "I understand the concept, but no one has ever created a stable one of these before."

"Yeah, well, this one sure isn't stable either," the raccoon conceded, stopping between the gate and Morrow herself. "But for what I've got mind, instability is the goal, the more-so the better."

The Cornerian spy eyed Rick with an insidious combination of both skepticism and curiosity, saying, "do elaborate."

"Once we've lured Aster's forces down in our feigned last stand, we'll fire up the hoop as hard as it goes, wrecking this space-time peephole, and the hostile forces will be dragged to the other side," Rick explained, trying not to sound too pleased with himself. "Combined with detonating what's left of this ship's main reactor, the end-result will be one hell of a fireworks display, and it'll look like the Enigma was destroyed. Then we all slip out quietly while the mess distracts anyone looking on from the outside, and by 'quietly,' we mean riding out in the explosive shock-wave with her cloak engaged.

For her part, Gillian Morrow was not entirely impressed, and asked, "is all this convoluted, dubious misdirection really necessary for extraction? If you can send Aster's forces to 'the other side,' why not simply send the Enigma there to escape?"

"You said it yourself: nobody's ever made a stable one of these. Getting to the other side is turbulent at best, but surviving there and getting out in one piece is a chaotic cluster-nut," the old raccoon replied, waving vaguely toward the hoop structure. "Since this reverse-engineered hodgepodge works less of a gateway and more like a bomb, that's how we're going to use it. We'll make the perils of this thing our pursuers' problem, not ours, and we'll make our escape under that cover."

"Does it even function properly?" the Cornerian spy questioned, stepping forward. "I can hardly rely on untested, cobbled-together alien leftovers. When I commit to a mission, I need all parts of it to–"

Rick tossed something at Morrow, which she swiftly caught with lightning reflexes; a telltale testament to her intelligence training.

"You know what that is?" Rick asked quickly.

"A displacement beacon," Morrow answered, looking over the fist-sized sphere with its myriad of Krazoic markings."These were supposed to be confiscated after the Icerain debacle."

"This old gateway runs on similar principles with similar tech as those tiny beacons we've used before, only on a far larger scale," the old raccoon explained.

"So this is how you escaped Corneria, how you vanished like ghosts," Morrow said as she tossed the beacon back to Rick. "I should've known."

Rick nodded in acknowledgment as he pocketed the small sphere. "The gateway sure as hell isn't stable, but it'll do what we need it to do, just like this beacon did."

Agent Gillian Morrow did more than simply take her time here: she milked the moment for all the tension she could wring from it. Rick didn't appreciate the stunt when they worked together before, and didn't appreciate it now, which was probably Morrow's point in the first place. She'd already made her decision: the intentional delay in answering was simply a power play, and not even one meant to make Rick feel anxious. It was simply a subtle way to belittle the older spy, a means to remind Rick that he was on the back foot, that his fate was almost entirely in Agent Morrow's hands.

He hated it, and she relished in it, and Rick was betting it would work in his favor...

"I'll be frank, Richard," Morrow deigned to say after she felt she'd dragged it out far enough. "There's a bit more dramatic flair to this whole affair than I prefer, but I can't deny how far it's sure to set Venom back to lose such valuable assets..."

And still she strung it out. For just a fleeting, angry moment, Rick ran through his plan if the answer was 'no,' and it wasn't pretty.

"Consider your mission proposal, convoluted though it may be, approved," Morrow finally said, extending a slender hand to Rick.

The two veteran spied shook hands, and locked eyes. It was professional, cordial, and carefully controlled as neither wanted to tip their hand to the other: a perilous dance of both respect and contempt intrinsic to espionage. There were so many layers of suspicion and opportunity for both parties involved...

Richard Cooney was sick and tired of the whole charade, but for the sake of the moment, he still had to play it for now.

"Once this is all over, we expect the CSB will be off our backs, for good this time," the older raccoon insisted. "No more hunting us down in this silly vendetta of yours. We've proven we can evade you, even with the best Corneria will let you throw at us."

"To be fair, you really ought to have joined up with the Bureau when you had the chance. We could've put your singular talents to so much better use," Morrow criticized with a disappointed sigh, and took another look at stone hoop. "However, for Doctor Cadan Olsen, Connor Griffon, and the Enigma –thus delivering a severe blow to Venom, with the added bonus of bringing the Zura family back to Corneria– I think you'll have earned a blanket pardon for past transgressions against Corneria, and a status as CSB contacts."

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Comments,
"Anonymous" Richard Cooney, former member of Lylat Central Intelligence.

In general, I believe Fear is a terribly misunderstood, tragically undervalued emotion.

First in foremost: Fear makes you aware. It keeps your head on a constant swivel, looking out for any possible threats or complications well before they blow up and become true problems. Fear makes you take issues truly seriously, and motivates you to resolve them expediently and efficiently. When contained and and properly harnessed, the adrenaline-fire of Fear can empower the engine of your grandest designs.

Across my long and storied career, I've always thrived on my Fear.

However, when I laid down the groundwork for this grand caper, I'd gone far past Fear, straight into the paranoid frenzy of Desperation.

Unhinged Desperation is utterly, insidiously dangerous. Priorities are skewed in desperate times by the sense of looming danger, urging us to make decisions and take action as fast as possible. In our heart-pounding haste, we miss the warning signs and red flags, we'll fail to consider wider consequences beyond our immediate concerns...

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Present Day
Press Release,
Dr. E. Andross.

I am at once appalled, disappointed, and greatly saddened by events that have come to my attention.

Once again, just as it has been countless times before, Corneria has seen fit to blatantly and callously interfere in the peaceful affairs of other worlds. This time, the tragedy has occurred on the planet Titania, just as Venom landed our first transition teams to welcome this wonderful world into our coalition. At the tragic and unnecessary loss of Venom's courageous and compassionate personnel, an insidious insurgency on Titania has been discovered. These bloodthirsty miscreants are backed by Corneria, with the sole purpose of inciting attacks of terror against Venom's peaceful and charitable presence on the world.

Was it not enough to fuel a deadly civil war on Zoness? How many lives have been lost and ruined by the ravages from such an atrocious conflict of arms? How much precious economic vitality, that Cornerian leadership holds such esteemed value to, been shattered by the ensuing disruption of business and industry? Though it sickens me to think so, perhaps that is precisely the point.

It has been made painfully clear that words alone, no matter how impassioned, are insufficient to convey the gravity of the impasse we find ourselves at. To this end, I have dispatched the Venomian First Fleet to the Corneria-allied world of Aquas, where it shall remain until negotiations are held to discuss terms.

Enough is enough. A line has been crossed, thus a line drawn has been drawn in return. I implore you to meet us in negotiation that we may come to an arrangement, so we will not be forced to have our discussion by more dire means. Marshal conflict is ugly, tragic, and unnecessary, and I'm sure it is the last thing any of us wants.

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Author Notes:

It's been a while.

I'll admit, I've had a bit of a writing block. It's never been about what happens, about the beats of the narrative I want to hit. The track of content is relatively neatly laid out from here to the end in outline form. I suppose I'm experiencing the time-honored endemic to many writer-folk: struggling to put the darned thing to page.

Strictly speaking, the content of this chapter isn't required to keep the flow of the story beat going. One of the themes flying around the background though is Rick's guilt, the particulars of which are detailed here. I also wanted to lay down a bit of foreshadowing, and add a prod of setting-based tension in the background with some words from Andross. I did have a follow-up scene in mind to add on to the end of this chapter, detailing the Cornerian government's response to Andross' ultimatum. After editing this section out though, it feels like it flows better, and that the behind-closed-doors political-drama style scene would have added another scene and another set of characters that don't do much to reinforce the story as is. I also feel like leaving out the exchanges of Corneria's leadership and advisors lends a bit of tense ambiguity. The current set of characters are effectively cut off from governing bodies, so they have to make their decisions and take their actions in the dark.

As always, your feedback is most welcome.

(Also, I know there's a few stories/writers floating around here that I was following, but haven't been lately. For those lapses, I do apologize, and would love to pick up wherever it was I left off. I may need to be reminded which ones, if only to give my brain something to look at and have opinions about.)