The Cornerian orbital gate was primed and ready for our use once we returned to the planet.
We were not too far away from the blue planet once we got the general's message, so it wasn't a long trip back. Before the Great Fox II arrived at her first destination, I spent the time suiting myself up. The rush of excitement that normally accompanied this routine sequence felt less so given the kind of week I had.
Nevertheless, I made sure that I was well-equipped for a potentially risky mission. I slipped on a body suit identical to the one I had worn during the Aparoid assault, though it was more violet in colour and short-sleeved. I also slipped on my grey jacket with our crimson logo sewn on the back; I had just received it several weeks prior, making me more uniform with the other members, along with a lovely yellow neckerchief. I even got myself a pair of long white boots that closed around my calves, which I thought looked rather fetching.
Having all of my gear on now, I looked at myself in my dressing mirror for a moment. Having spent most of my life in tattered rags, donated clothes, and even skimpy tops and loincloths while fighting in a civil war on a humid planet, I now looked like a professional who had found her place in the universe—or at the very least on the right path to finding it. Was my tenure on Star Fox merely a stepping stone towards something else?
I couldn't be sure, but I wagered that I would likely know sometime after we finished General Pepper's assignment. I wasn't so melodramatic that I was willing to drop all of my duties while they were still mine. And besides, nothing good has ever come out from Venom. This most certainly was a priority.
Before I left my room, I made sure to grab my staff, which was hung carefully on my wall. I have had this thing at my side at nearly every moment of my life, even from the time when I was only an orphaned child on Corneria. It is the only heirloom I have from my family and my lost culture. Its true purpose has always been a mystery to me, but it has served me impeccably well in my survival during my youth after I taught myself to master the magic within it. It has been my lifelong companion; keeping a forgotten memory of my world alive.
I made sure to bring it along with me on every mission, both for preparedness and for sentimentality. I now made sure to keep it extra close to me after I had lost it on Sauria before Fox had ultimately recovered and returned it to me upon saving me. What a breathtaking moment it was to see them both at my rescue…
Before long, our access was verified to use the orbital gate, and the Great Fox II along with everything inside it was transported to the other end of the Lylat system in mere seconds. The tranquil blue aura of Corneria was soon replaced by the imposing planet of Venom, which had a thick atmosphere of green clouds containing various toxic gases that covered the whole world.
Andross was as evil and murderous as he was brilliant for somehow managing to create an army on the planet during his exile, one that came incredibly close to overtaking the Lylat System as a whole. My praises for the mad ape scientist halted there, for otherwise, the menace was good for nothing else. Given his demonstrated ability to overwhelm worlds, I had a suspicion that he maybe had a role to play in Cerinia's destruction, though I wasn't completely sure of that given certain timeframe inconsistencies. Nevertheless, his death I felt was good enough retribution even if he was somehow guilty, on top of all of his countless other heinous crimes against life itself.
With the Great Fox II now appearing within Venom's magnetosphere, I along with the whole squadron rushed into the hangar and hopped in our Arwings before promptly launching ourselves into the vacuum of space on route to the research vessel in distress. The Cloud Runner soared as gracefully as she looked while alongside the other three; the lack of any air resistance in space always made flying a much smoother ride. My weapons were undeployed, but I had my thumb close to the switch on my right yoke, for I sensed that something devious was afoot and had to be ready for anything.
"All right, everyone, keep an eye open for any bogies," Fox advised us through our commlinks. I was also able to see everyone's canopy video feed on my console. "Venom is always a hotspot for trouble. I worry that the science team aboard that ship might have found that out the hard way."
"Like most suckers do when they think it's a good idea to tackle Venom within any distance," Falco remarked. "What did they think they would be doing out here? Ain't it illegal to be anywhere near Venom right now or something like that?"
"General Pepper sent us the transcripts for their voyage shortly before we passed through the orbital gate," Fox explained. "Hey, ROB? Be a pal since I don't have them on hand."
"THE VESSEL IS CALLED THE ALPHA QUAZAR," ROB then relayed on our coms. "ITS OBJECTIVE WAS TO INVESTIGATE UNUSUAL ACTIVITY OCCURRING WITHIN THE TOXIC SEAS OF VENOM, BUT THAT WAS ONLY PART OF ITS MISSION—THE OBJECTIVE THAT WAS PERMITTED TO PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE. GENERAL PEPPER DID NOT PROVIDE FURTHER INFORMATION THAT WOULD ELABORATE ITS ELUSIVE SECOND OBJECTIVE, BUT CLASSIFIED SHIPPING RECORDS LIST ONBOARD HARDWARE LINKED TO THE RESEARCH OF PORTAL EXPERIMENTATION."
"Oh boy," Falco muttered. "You guys think that's what all the trouble's for? A few nosey pirates ransacked the ship for its technological loot? Seems like that could work."
"Maybe," I agreed, "but that would raise the question as to how they would have known if this ship's mission was classified."
"You've got a point, Krystal," Slippy also agreed. "I'll bet my ballcap that some more sophisticated party is at play here. Maybe the last lingering remnants of Andross's empire crawling out of the sludge to steal any technology to help rebuild their forces?"
"It matters little who it is or how they knew about it," Fox spoke up authoritatively. "Having portal technology in the wrong hands would not be helpful to anyone who likes decency at all."
"No doubt serving as the reason why Pepper called us out here to handle this," Falco said, sounding less interested in the broader dangerous prospects and more so in the chance to show his metal.
"Well then, let's not waste any time then," Slippy encouraged. "We save that precious tech and get out of here soon before the heat turns up."
"Why? You gotta date or something? It's never any fun without playing roulette with death," Falco said brashly, a little too eager to blow up an enemy fighter who wasn't as skilled as him―as usual.
"S-some of us got things to live for, you know…" Slippy stuttered back a little.
I managed a little smile when I heard that, though I couldn't sense Fox or Falco picking up on it. Some weeks ago, I had overthought Slippy thinking of a girl he had been meeting on private video chats named Amanda and appeared to be quite enraptured with her. Slippy had yet to tell us of her, and I hadn't seen what she looked like, but I imagined she was a frog just like him. I felt happy for him having found somebody; I had hoped that I too would forge a relationship with Fox, but I wasn't quite sure of that dream anymore at this point.
"All right, knock it off, guys, we gotta focus here," Fox interrupted. "We're approaching the Alpha now."
While having always been in view, the details of the Alpha Quazar were becoming clear the closer we came with our cautious approach, and I could tell already that something was off. It was a moderately sized asteroidbreaker, identical in size to the Great Fox II, with a reinforced dark green haul, outer plating, and three long antennae protruding down from the ship's underbelly. The ship looked unharmed and without any signs of struggle or incursion, but no lights were emanating from any of the windows and portholes, and the bridge located at the boxy bow of the ship was completely dark. Not even its nav lights were blinking.
"That doesn't look too encouraging…" Slippy observed dreadfully as we stopped ourselves a comfortable distance from the silent, drifting Alpha Quazar.
"Krystal, can you sense anybody on board?" Fox asked. I had already begun my telepathic scan of the ship long before he had even asked me, and the results made a pit in my stomach.
"Nothing…" I reported. "I sense nobody aboard that vessel. She's a ghostship."
"Oh no, are we too late?" Slippy asked with concern.
"Maybe they've jettisoned in escape pods?" Falco suggested. "Let's hope they didn't land on Venom, 'cause they'd be good as dead anyway."
Without commenting on either of those possibilities, Fox radioed the Alpha's bridge. "Alpha Quazar, this is Fox McCloud of the Star Fox team," he announced. "We have received your distress call and have come to assist. Please respond."
Radio silence followed Fox's request. He spoke the same message again with greater emphasis, but still no reply. "Gee; if not jettisoned, I sure hope everybody's just on their union-paid naptime in their psionic-resistant bunks…" Falco said half-seriously, though his tone conveyed discernible unease.
"I have a bad feeling that no escape pods launched…" Slippy said gravely. I said nothing, for I felt a discontinuity here. Among other senses, I had a particular sensitivity to death. The mindful stench of it lingers for a while, even amongst the cerebral realm that I was naturally in tune with. I sensed no such telepathic stench aboard that ship, which only made me more anxious.
"I don't sense death aboard that ship either," I relayed my internal thoughts across our comms. "Something isn't right here."
"Indeed," Fox agreed. "Falco, you take starboard and I'll take port. We'll survey the whole thing and meet at the bridge. Take it slowly."
"Sure thing," Falco complied.
"Slip, Krystal, you stay there and watch our flanks,"
"Roger," Slippy said obediently.
"All right…" I said, hoping I didn't sound as dismal as I felt about being kept back. I could sense a measure of relief coming from Fox's Arwing, but I was left to interpret what it was meant for. It either meant that he was relieved that I would stay out of his way, or that I wouldn't be in the danger zone―or maybe it was completely unrelated to me. I didn't like having to guess Fox's motives like this, but I had to keep my head in the game. We were on a rescue mission after all, but I was left to dwell on these things anyway having been shoved to the sidelines while the leader and the ace pilot surveyed the wayward vessel.
Fox and Falco had deployed their searchlights and carefully moved around their designated sides of the ship horizontally, their Arwings' noses facing the haul, before meeting up around the bridge at the front of the ship. "I can't see anybody inside," Falco deduced.
"Me neither," Fox said. "The ship is completely without her crew."
"N-N-Now what do we do?" Slippy asked nervously. "We can't just tow her away with our Arwings; it'll fry all our G-Diffusers."
"I think we might need to go aboard," Fox said, stirring us up with such a radical plan.
"Are you crazy?!" Slippy winced. "You're not thinking of d-d-driving that thing, are you?"
"I'm not sure myself, Slip, but we have to deal with this somehow," Fox argued. "All of that tech in there; if any of it is still onboard, we should try and retrieve it one way or another."
"I advocate sending it careening into Venom," Falco proposed. "She'll burn up along with the tech. It can't fall into the wrong hands if it's all destroyed. No liabilities that way."
"I would second with you, Falco," I said. "But I worry it may not be that simple. There may be a…"
I paused once my thoughts were identifying dozens of new thought patterns suddenly flaring up. They were coming up from below us from Venom's surface and rapidly approaching. "Krystal…?" Fox asked, disturbed by my loss of voice.
"Everyone, disperse!" I called urgently once I knew the thoughts were hostile and fixated on us. Fox, Slippy, and Falco did as I said and pulled an emergency reverse from their positions and a brief but cluttered storm of green laser blasts shot upward from below. A good many shots managed to pepper the haul of the Alpha Quazar without breach. We all quickly reoriented ourselves as a new voice muscled its way onto our com channel.
"Back away from here, mammalian slime…" a strange pilot's voice sputtered to life on our receivers as a horde of crude but mean-looking spacecraft rose to meet us. "You are trespassing over our orbital space. That ship now belongs to the Anglars. Flee now while we're still merciful, but feel free to stay put. It matters little either way…"
"The who?" Falco queried, but Fox took command before any kind of response was given to Falco's reasonable question.
"I don't care who you are," Fox retorted back at the attackers. "We answered this ship's distress call, and we will defend it with all that we got!"
"Good…" the 'Anglar' pilot cooed with delight before all chaos broke loose. "Obliterate the interlopers!"
The bloated squadron of starfighters rocketed straight towards us with blazing laser cannons as we all sped for them for the counterattack—though, one in particular did it way faster than the rest of us.
"Finally! Some action!" Falco hollered with glee as he dashed towards the oncoming barrage of laser blasts, creating a long, bright blue streak from his engines. The ensuing dogfight was about as chaotic as I was used to at this point. These elusive angular pilots were flying clapped-out Venom fighters that seemed faded and even corroded in some spots in their plating, most likely having been left to rust on Venom's brutal surface after Andross was defeated. Whoever these Anglars were, they seemed to be from Venom, but I had never heard of them up until now. I was anything but impressed by their first impressions.
Our orbital battlefield extended well beyond the space our ghostship occupied as we each chased up to four or five fighters at a time while simultaneously trying to shake off four or five more fighters off of our tails. The others handled their foes with tremendous skill. Fox was an agile pilot who pulled off clever aerial manoeuvres that confused and outwitted his opponents before he efficiently blasted them to space dust.
Slippy was a bit over-cautious and tended to need assistance when he wasn't paying attention to the fighters tailing him, but he proved to be a methodical pilot and outpaced the angular aggressors by knowing which of his handy peripherals to use and when to use them for maximum damage and execution. Falco was once again proving himself to be the most skilled pilot out of all of us—certainly the best one that I knew. He took out most of the fiendish fighters with little issue, somewhat becoming the primary target for many of the remaining fighters. Even still, he was especially prone to cockiness and bit off a bit more than he could chew at some moments, but he managed to dig his way out of a tight situation with minimal damage to his Arwing.
I was certainly no seasoned pilot like the others, but I think I managed my lot decently enough. My trump card was my telepathy, which allowed me to predict my enemy's moves before they had the chance to execute their planned strategies. Even amidst dodging laser blasts and firing upon fighters with my own while flying through the destroyed fighters' combustion plumes, I wondered if that skill alone still made me worthy in Fox's eyes. Would I truly ever get over this?
"Keep on them, guys, we're thinning them out good," Fox advised us on our coms, sounding stressed but resolved.
"Real fishes out of water, aren't they?" Falco spewed as I watched him from a great distance away light up the starry backdrop of space with a fiery plume of former Anglar rivals.
"It pays to be amph-ph-ph-ph-phibious!" Slippy cheered, all of this excitement bringing him equal parts elation and terror.
"You fools!" the Anglar pilot that had taunted us before suddenly breached our channel. "Do you believe you have done something? You have just declared war on the Anglar Empire!"
"Big frickin' deal, pal," Falco snapped back. "When you guys can top a giant cybernetic bug thing that talks like my mamma, maybe I'll listen!"
In no time at all after that, we had reduced the invading Anglar assault from thirty to nine, and it was then at last did the survivors obtained the better sense to retreat. "You have sealed your doom, mammalian scum! You will rue the day you have stood in the way of our grand uprising!" the Anglar commander cursed before speeding back down to Venom, becoming smaller and smaller until they vanished beneath the clouds.
"Hmph; g-g-guess the creep doesn't care for frogs," Slippy huffed indignantly.
"Or avians," Falco said with equal disapproval. "Mammalian my feathered behind."
The four of us began to round up closer together now that the fight appeared to be over with us as the victors and the Alpha Quazar still intact and modestly grazed from the battle. "Great teamwork as always, Star Fox. Couldn't have pulled that off without any of you," Fox congratulated. I managed to smile when I heard that. I hoped he truly meant that.
"No sweat, Fox. Just a routine job as always," Falco said, sounding incredibly sure of himself, and deservedly so after the show he put on.
"Yes. But we're not done yet," Fox reminded. "We still need to figure out what to do with the Alpha Quazar. She's still a sitting duck out here."
"At least we chased those creeps away, but no telling how long they will take before they bring backup," Slippy addressed. "What do we do, Fox? Burn her up? Or bring ROB over here for a tow?"
This was the moment when I had fully disconnected from the decisive conversation, down to the point where I no longer heard it in my ear. I was suddenly overwhelmed with an immense sense of dread; unlike anything I had felt in a long time. Something else had just manifested out of nowhere; it was right behind me inside the Alpha Quazar, and I could feel it staring right at me. I slowly turned to look outside my cockpit, and I had only been spared a split second to spot an ominous pale figure standing in one of the porthole windows before an enormous pulse of energy shot out from the ship in all directions, forcing all of our Arwings back and tumbling.
"WHOA—!" was the only thing I managed to hear Falco holler before my mind was then flooded by the deafening screams of disembodied voices that were continuously cutting in and out in my mind. In between cuts, I could make out barely decipherable sentences such as, "It's out of control—! Can't shut it down—! We're all gonna die—!"
The voices were so numerous and all-encompassing that I desperately tried covering my ears to make them stop but with no success. I think I finally managed to detect the missing crew of the Alpha Quazar, and they were fluctuating in and out of existence.
"W-W-What's happening with the Quazar?!" Slippy exclaimed, though his staticky voice was drowned out profusely by the cries swirling in my head.
Hoping to gain control of myself, I finally managed to look at the Alpha Quazar outside, and I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. Its lights flickered on and off alongside the telepathic cries of terror as tendrils of bright green energy punctured out from the ship's haul, enveloping the entire vessel in a sizzling green electrical aura that seemed to squeeze down on the ship like a giant hand was crushing it.
I could only watch in both amazement and horror as a giant seam snapped right through the entire ship, breaking it in two, and both halves along with its fragments began to get sucked inward into a mass of swirling green energy that was growing larger and larger each second. Its pull was also growing in strength along with it as I felt the Cloud Runner drifting towards the wreckage like it was magnetised to the field.
"Everyone, pull out! Pull out!" Fox commanded everyone on his scrambly com. He did not need to tell me to move out of there as quickly as I could. I swiftly re-engaged my G-Diffuser engines and quickly began to take off with great speed alongside the others who were retreating to the Great Fox II. Though caving in on itself, the Alpha Quazar was still expelling dangerous amounts of volatile energy, and in my haste, I crossed paths with an oncoming arch that short-circuited all of my systems, rendering my display dark as my engines abruptly died.
It was a harrowing feeling knowing that all means of propulsion were completely stripped away, and in seconds I was drifting toward the rift of energy again, which had now almost entirely engulfed both halves of the Quazar whole, and I was on track to join it. My sense of panic rose to an all-time high as I hurriedly tried to reactivate the Cloud Runner with no success, even banging my console in total desperation.
Intense green light illuminated my dark cockpit as I became swept up in the rift's inescapable pull. Any attempt I made to use my headset failed, and with impending doom growing ever closer, I sent out one last desperate telepathic "HELP ME!" to anyone who could receive it. I could do absolutely nothing as I helplessly as the rift completely overtook my field of vision. The entirety of the Alpha Quazar was now gone, and I was now careening straight toward the rift that devoured it whole.
Before I and my Cloud Runner made contact, I managed one last hopeless look outside my cockpit to see Fox's Arwing speeding towards me at full throttle, but it was too late. I was already pulled straight through the rift well before he could even hope to reach me in time. Whatever waited for me beyond this rift I didn't know, but what was certain was that I was gone along with the remains of the Alpha Quazar.