AN: I will not take long to explain so I will just get to the point. I was dissatisfied with the way the story was going and so I changed it...yes for the third time. Feel free to be frustrated, I certainly am. It is galling that it has taken me three attempts to become satisfied with it. This version will be different from its predecessors. The first rendition was terrible and the second fell flat for me. As they say, third times the charm. I have a goof feeling about this one. I have decided to loosely follow in the steps Heart of Iron. No. It will not be remotely the same, just a similar concept. So if you liked that you you should enjoy this.

I will not take any more of your time I just felt this needed an explanation.

Legacy of the Precursors

Prologue: Lost

Reach burned.

In orbit, the smoldering hulks of over a hundred UNSC vessels and countless lost souls drifted amidst the cooling remains of the once seemingly indomitable super MAC defense grid. The orbital graveyard was not solely human however. They had not gone down without a fight. More than twice as many covenant ships decorated the void, a vengeful penance for humanity's loss. The only ships still moving under their own power was the colossal covenant armada, systematically carving holy glyphs into the dying world's surface with righteous zeal.

On the surface, surviving UNSC units were methodically slaughtered, swarmed by the relentless horde of an alien army, their crimson blood oozing into the charred earth. They did not fight in the hopes of victory. They fought to spite their genocidal adversaries, to sate their rage at the death of their planet, a performance carried out on countless worlds beforehand. This obscene glut of carnage was nothing new, just another act in an endless play of violent madness.

Cities were ruthlessly glassed and their inhabitants purged with sanctified high energy plasma. There was no pity for the defenseless masses, only virtuous fervor. Their extinction was the will of the prophets, their genocide, a welcomed boon to the gods. The eradication of humanity was for the great journey, an honorable pursuit.

Soon, there would be nothing left of the brave defenders, the remnants dying out, one by one.

Only one ship of note had managed to escape, a single halcyon-class cruiser, where within the salvation of humanity resided.

But its escape would not have been possible without sacrifice.

Six sat in the gunner chair of the mass driver and gazed up into the polluted sky through a silver polarized visor, a heavy curtain of ashen clouds obscuring the outline of the cruiser he had saved as it breached the atmosphere.

The spartan-III carried a small, sad smile under his helmet as he slumped into this seat, his mission finally accomplished. He could see off in the distance, a swarm of phantoms as they leisurely neared his position with a casual finality, no doubt packed with elites frenzied with bloodlust, each hoping they would receive the honor of slaying one of the heretical human's legendary demons.

Six supposed he should have felt fear at the promise of death. But in all honesty, all he felt was relief. Soon he would join the other members of Noble, wherever it was that death had taken them, and he would at last have his peace. At first he had despised them and Colonel Holland for forcing him to work with a team. The spartan was a lone wolf, always had been. But, as time and the war progressed, he had accepted them for what they were, his broken and mismatched family.

The spartan chuckled sardonically.

It had all been rather pointless hadn't it?

All that comradery and false sense of hope...

In the end they all had died, and now he was on his own...just like old times.

The first phantom sped ahead of its brethren and arrived, disgorging its alien payload a level below him, the spartan watching disspationatly as a wave of elites made their way across, barking and gibbering in their alien tongue and gesturing threateningly with their weapons. But their words fell on deaf ears. Six had long ago shut off his translation software, tired of listening to their religious ravings.

Tired, that's what he was, tired of death, tired of this one-sided war, tired of watching comrade after comrade fall, of clawing tooth and nail for scraps of success marred by tidal waves of defeat.

The pack of aliens stopped at the foot of the gun, glaring up at the spartan, barking challenges for him to come down and battle. It was quite possible that they were insulting his lineage and heritage, useless taunts all. They had murdered his family and glassed his homeworld before he had reached the age synonymous with his designation.

In response, the spartan sighed in resignation and calmly reached for the bandolier on his bulky breastplate, pulling the pin off a frag grenade and palming it in his gauntlet thoughtfully.

The spartan's augmented mind allowed him to perceive time at a much slower rate, not for long, but enough for him to deliberate the merits of suicide.

The grenade slowly began to hiss out sparks and a faint whisper of smoke.

On one hand he would be spiting the enemy and their foolish desire for trial by combat, but he felt it a waste of his value.

The seconds slowly counted down.

On the other, it would be more productive for him to utilize his last moments to slaughter as many of the enemy as he could.

The grenade began to shake in his grip.

'No. There are better ways to die.'

Six tossed the smoking frag down to the squad of elites and slipped out of the gunner's chair. An explosion thundered moments later and he heard the alien's growl in pain and rage.

The spartan leapt down and crushed one under his boot as he unslung his assault rifle and emptied the clip at one of its comrades. It took him little time and effort to wipe out the small group of elites.

He had become quite proficient at murder.

Walking away from the brutal aftermath, he made way out of the complex and into the mountains. An idea had occurred to him, a plan he recalled having used once before with desirable results.

There indeed were better ways to die. The big man had given him inspiration.

A slipspace bomb ought to be sufficient.

Operation: UPPER CUT, where they had destroyed a covenant supercarrier. Such a plan could work again, especially if he had no expectations of survival. He had helped Kat create the makeshift device and could replicate the same procedure on his own. The only problem was, where did one get a Shaw-Fujikawa slipspace drive?

There were most likely none left. But perhaps one of the wrecks up in space had one that still functioned. He would have to head up their anyways to deploy the bomb. He remembered that there was a spare YSS Sabre in Sword Base. He had seen it in the dock beside the one he and Jorge had used. Six just hoped it would still be there.

Still, it was a long walk from where he was to the facility, and the other phantoms would soon arrive. He had to act fast. Six scanned his surroundings, scouting the small deserted outpost just under and around the mass driver.

Lying keeled to its side, he found a warthog a few meters distant. He flipped the car and gave it a quick once over. The rear axle was fucked and the hydrogen engine's casing was cracked and leaking, but it would get him to where he needed to be.

The spartan keyed the ignition and gunned the engine, speeding away from the mass driver and the approaching covenant forces.

The drive was longer than anticipated, he having to duck countless covenant patrols and weave through plains of crackling glass. It gave him plenty of time to see the enemy's handiwork. Off in the distance lay the broken and jagged spires of New Alexandria. The covenant had thoroughly annihilated the once beautiful city, taking great pleasure in its destruction.

All that remained were the skeletons of the city's high rises, Reach's looming tombstones. The rest of the metropolis had been slagged to glass, nothing but twisted steel and scorched bone.

Thankfully, the city's forsaken ruins soon disappeared behind the shattered mountains and the abandoned shell of sword base materialized on the horizon. Six could see the remains of their last major battle weeks prior, broken vehicles and bones garbed in standard UNSC combat armor, still fiercely clutching their weapons in skeletal grips in defense of the fallen fortress, their loyalty surpassing the cold grasp of death.

The warthog gave its last cough and spluttered to a stop a kilometer from the base's doors. The spartan climbed out and patted the car on the hood, thanking it for getting him this far.

Once inside, Six walked its deserted corridors and traced a path through memory to the launch bay.

Things had changed, a matter of days ago, he had come here with his squad, all still alive and well. And now, he alone marched through its barren halls.

The spartan paused as he came across a set of large steel doors, remembering that the armory was down that way.

Should he bother? Was there even a point in arming up?

He thought it over before he shrugged.

Why the hell not? There was no one left to use them anyways.

Six went inside the armory. The room was mostly empty, but there was enough for a duffle bag of munitions and he found a sniper rifle with a few spare clips lying discarded in the corner. Tallying that with his rifle, shotgun, and magnum he had a decent arsenal. On his way out, the spartan decided to acquire a few covenant weapons as well. After all, there were plenty of corpses to take from. He took a full plasma repeater from an elite's dead hands and found one of their needle rifles beside the corpse of a jackal, placing them both inside the bag.

With his equipment set the next step was finding the Sabre.

He entered the launch pad and was surprised to see that the Sabre was still actually there, although there had been a firefight nearby and it suffered some splash damage, small patches of slagged hull scarred by stray plasma. After a quick checkup he discovered it was thankfully still space worthy so he loaded up the duffle in the small supply hatch under the cockpit and climbed inside, fitting his bulk in the pilot seat.

It was fortunate that the original design for the sabre had accounted for a spartan sized individual, having the supersoldiers in mind for their use.

The ceiling's hydraulic doors were warped wide open and the Sabre was already hooked up to the launch system so he had no need of doing anything else.

The spartan fiddled with the sabre's controls and prepped the fighter for launch, starting up the engines once he was satisfied with its performance.

The ship rumbled powerfully underneath him and he activated the multi-stage rocket assembly responsible for allowing the fighter to quickly break the atmosphere, launching his craft into the air and hurtling through the sky.

After breaching orbit, the spartan did a quick search with the Sabre's onboard Intel system to find the closest UNSC ship, a frigate by the name of Battleborn, a few hundred kilometers distant. It also warned him of the massive covenant fleet circumnavigating the planet. It was fortunate that they were preoccupied with glassing. Otherwise he suspected they would have noticed his launch. He would have to be careful to remain undetected. Time was needed to get the bomb ready before he would be able to deploy it.

Six shut down everything for his ship but the engine, slowly coasting across the blackened void to the frigate. It took hours, but he brought his fighter level with the frigate without drawing any attention. It would be easy to grab the drive, the Battleborn had taken a hit to the portside, a gaping twisted crater that dug into its heart.

He checked his MJOLNIR's HUD and made sure it was sealed before opening the cockpit and floating out, using his armor's thrusters to enter through the breach. Corpses in uniforms and scattered junk drifted in the zero-g environment with the spartan as he attempted to find ways past sealed bulkheads and reach the drive core.

His enhanced strength allowed him to peel open a crack in the last door and he slipped inside.

The drive was...bigger than he remembered.

Six was fairly confident he would not be able to fit it in his Sabre. He would have preferred to use a Shiva tactical nuke, but he had checked the bridge logs and discovered all the ones on this ship had been expended in the battle and he was certain it was the same for all the others. This was his only recourse.

There had to be some way to get it done, but how?

The spartan took a few minutes to puzzle out a solution.

Perhaps if he managed to somehow, reduce its size? The yield would definitely be affected, but at least he would be able to use it, or he hoped so anyways.

After much thought, he was able to take the center of the drive out. Almost immediately, his suit began to warn him of the potentially lethal amounts of radiation emitting from the core, or at least it would be without his MJOLNIR. The only affect he suffered was an occasional burst of disruptive static across his HUD, the thick plating and shields acting as a buffer against the harmful rays.

In order for the bomb to work he had to head up to the bridge and scavenge a small monitor and some other electronics to jury-rig a display and attach it to the device. Using the rest of the components, he configured the drive core to overload after a timed countdown.

If it all went according to plan, the device would open an enormous slipspace rupture inside the ship. What happened next was anyone's guess. UNSC vessels had been lost in the tides of slipspace before, never to return. Physics had no real hold in that realm of threaded dimensions, and anything could and would be possible. The drive was responsible for directing ships through the warped realty, but, when used as a bomb...

He shook his head slightly.

The spartan was not afraid of death or the unknown. Such human frailties had been ripped from his soul. The only fear he still carried was the fear of failure.

Six hooked up the last connecting wire and booted the screen, using the core's energy to power the circuitry.

He would not fail.

The finished product was about the size and shape of a SPNKR rocket launcher and a thousand times deadlier. Six mag-locked it to his back and boosted his way out of the frigate, climbing back into his Sabre and gliding off with his lethal creation.

All he needed now was a target, preferably something small enough for the bomb to destroy and sufficiently secluded from the rest of the fleet so that reinforcements would not come in time to stop him.

'Something like that...' Six spied a covenant corvette that had just jumped in, lingering at the edge of the system, probably a late arrival to the fight or perhaps a messenger vessel.

The timing was suspiciously convenient.

Whatever, he was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Covenant corvettes were naturally unshielded, making it easier for him to find entry. It would also carry a smaller contingent of crew and strike craft, a prime target.

He would have to be fast, get inside, clear out the hanger, and activate the bomb, a quick and easy fitting conclusion to his tale.

The Sabre blasted towards the target vessel and Six flooded power into the offline systems, ready for a fight.

The corvette's commander noticed the singular ship approaching but must have disregarded it as only a handful of seraphs launched to intercept.

That was a mistake.

Six speared the Sabre directly towards the teardrop shaped alien strike craft and waited for the welcoming tone of a lock-on.

Meanwhile, the lead fighter directed a salvo of plasmatic energy arcing towards him and soon the others followed suit.

He banked hard to the right and spun the Sabre on its Y-axis, dodging the plasma bolts and hearing the telltale ring of a target lock. His thumb pressed down on the flight stick's topmost button and the hatches on either side of the sabre's hull peeled open and belched out a quintet of medusa missiles. The heat seeking rockets sought out each of the four craft and no matter how hard they juked and weaved, all of them impacted their targets.

The seraphs shield's still held, hanging by a thread, but now he was able to mop them up with a fusillade of shells from the 30mm rotary cannons. The high caliber shots pocketing their thin hulls and ripping them apart in a bright flash of energy.

More fighters launched and he was forced to weave through trails of enemy fire as the corvette's anti-fighter defenses activated, peppering the space around him with a wall of energized gases.

But Noble Six had been a pilot in the original sabre program, the best. No one had ever managed to outfly him, certainly not any of these covenant bastards.

Another seraph was reduced to scrap as its shields folded under a stream of cannon fire, the doomed fighter spiraling off into the void and detonating violently.

Seconds later, a small burst of plasma splashed against the sabre's shields, dropping them dangerously.

Six cut the power to the engines and sharply pulled back on the stick, throwing its nose towards what he perceived as up.

The pair of seraphs on his tail shot past, the pilots taken by surprise with the sudden trick.

They were not given time to recover as he dove down on them, sending each a pair of missiles as a gift, the explosives slamming into their afts. Both ships lost their rear ends as they were sheared off in the blast, venting atmosphere as the tumbled away.

Sweeping up the remaining fighters he turned back and threaded through the corvette's fire and rushed to the hanger.

As he neared he could see the covenant soldiers inside, watching as he headed straight towards them.

It would be a hectic landing.

Six flipped the thrusters on the side of the sabre and put them on reverse at full power, slowing his velocity considerably. Instead of smashing against the far wall of the hanger, he dropped to the deck and grinded across in a shower of sparks.

Before the ship stopped moving he popped the canopy and leapt out, spraying his surroundings in a rain of lead vomiting forth from the muzzle of his rifle.

The nose of his sabre mulched a squad of grunts too slow to get out of the way and gently came to a stop just in front of the wall.

Six hit the deck at a run, sprinting to take cover beside a tall purple container, a barrage of plasma splattering the deck around him courtesy of the angry aliens littering the hanger.

Slowly but surely, the spartan determinedly cleared the hanger of enemies, grunts ran chaotically as their elite masters crumpled under his assault. The jackals had more discipline and were harder to remove. The survivors had interlocked their wrist mounted shields and were steadily advancing on him, keeping the spartan in cover with a continuous stream of plasma bolts.

He needed to destroy their cohesion.

Six risked a brief glance out of cover and spied a fuel canister sitting beside a banshee. The potential explosive device was propped near the phalanx, but not close enough. He needed them to be a little closer.

He kept them distracted with occasional bursts from his rifle as he waited for them to get within blast range.

When he saw a clawed foot land next to the container he lobbed a frag over. The grenade soared into the air and hit the ground a meter too short and rolled the rest of the distance, the jackals unaware of the trap they had just unwittingly walked into.

Six's visor polarized and there was a loud roar as the fuel canister erupted, a geyser of purple flames shooting into the air. The eruption of kinetic force flung the phalanx apart and the banshee had burst, adding to the general chaos.

Using the opening, he stepped out of cover, quickly and efficiently cleaning up the stragglers.

The hanger absent of enemies for the moment, he pulled the bomb off his back and placed it on the ground. Six was not a religious man, but he prayed to any god he knew that this bomb would work.

He set the timer for twenty minutes and prepared to buckle down. He didn't just want to let the bomb go off, he intended to take as many of the covenant as he could before it did. Twenty minutes should give him some time to work.

The spartan rounded up some supply containers and used them to create a fortress of sorts, giving him a full range of cover.

Hastily, he went under the sabre and opened the bottom compartment. Rummaging in the duffle bag inside, he took out the shotgun and a few grenades, loading and propping the gun against a container and neatly lining up the frags beside it.

As he slapped a new clip into his MA5B, he heard a door open across the hanger.

It was time.

An alien howl announced the arrival of the corvette's security forces, a gold clad elite and a squad of veterans accompanied by heavily armed grunts, thirty odd in total.

Six propped his rifle on a container and squeezed the trigger, pelting the doorway with armor piercing rounds. The elite's steadily advanced, the bullets pinging of their shields as the grunts set up a plasma turret.

The spartan concentrated his fire on the lead alien warrior, but just as its shields gave out it dived into cover. Quickly, he swapped targets and hosed down one of its underlings.

The sangheili dropped, a multitude of craters in its armor leaking a steady flow of purple blood.

Six staggered backwards and hunkered down, his shields shattering against a fusillade of blue energy.

As he waited for them to recharge, he heard hooves fast approaching and let go of his rifle, grabbing the shotgun by his side.

He emerged from cover and leveled the barrel of the scattergun a foot away from an elite's mandibled maw.

The weapon barked and belched a cloud of gunsmoke, the buckshot blasting a crater in the alien's skull the size of an M9.

Six racked the pump and chambered another round, swerving it to knock-back another approaching elite. Its chest reduced to a gory mess of broken plates and rent flesh.

The gold commander had recovered by then and reeled an arm back to lob a flaming blue sphere in his direction.

Six focused fire on the elite's limb and severed it with a precise torrent of bullets.

The alien growled and clutched its oozing stump, watching as the hand still clutching the explosive dropped to its hooved feet. Before it could articulate its rage, the plasma grenade unleashed its payload, vaporizing the elite and reducing it into a fain purple mist.

A stream of plasma flooded towards him and the spartan hid behind his crates, now pinned by the grunts manning the heavy weapon.

Snatching a fragmentation grenade from the ground he hurled it across the hanger, destroying the gun and mutilating the unfortunate gunners.

The lapse in combat gave him enough time to risk a glance at the timer on the slipspace bomb.

7:39

Seven and a half minutes, he had to hold on for just seven more minutes.

The spartan watched as the doors on the opposite end opened and a hunter pair rushed in, the assault cannons grafted to their right arms glowing a sickly green.

Six sighed.

'Shit...'

With a warbling roar, one of them charged, a solid beam of emerald death surging towards him.

Six abandoned his now useless defenses and slid under the ray, the close proximity alone dropping his shields rapidly as it crashed into the hastily erected barricade, blowing it apart.

Rolling, he passed the first hunter and fired his shotgun at the second, the pellets deflecting off of its colossal tower shield.

The spartan was forced to evade once more as the hulking alien lowered its shoulder in an attempt to ram him. If the blow had connected, its razor sharp spines would have shredded through his thick titanium plates and carved deep into his shoulder.

Angered by the miss, the hunter whipped its shield and slapped him into a moored phantom, imprinting the spartan's figure in its hull. Six felt a sharp stab of pain as a few of his ribs cracked and he coughed hoarsely, a thin film of blood splattering across his visor.

Six hit the hanger's deck hard and painfully forced himself to stand, reaching for his shotgun.

He was not dead yet.

The spartan let the first hunter charge again and vaulted over it, jamming the barrel of his gun into the red-orange worm flesh of its exposed back and pulled the trigger.

The hunter howled in agony and dropped to its knees, a fountain of orange viscera bursting from its chest, the pile of wriggling worms slowly stilling in rigor mortis.

With a rage filled snarl, the spartan stepped onto its kneeling legs and clamped both of his gauntlets on the hunter's head, giving a sharp twist and pulling with all his might, ripping the armored mass of intelligent larvae from the rest of its colony.

The damage was too much to bear and the creature expired, moaning softly as its armored frame sagged heavily to the deck amid a twitching pool of what counted as its lifeblood.

Instantly, an eerie mournful shriek echoed from its bond brother, the hunter enraged at the death of its sibling, having felt their connection as it was brutally snuffed.

The incensed gestalt collective swung about wildly like a petulant infant the size of a battle tank. Banshees flew without pilots and a phantom was wrecked by its potent fury.

Six attempted to retreat from the insane creature, but it would not allow the murderer of its bond brother to escape. Faster than even a spartan could run, the massive mgalekgolo fired its cannon at the supersoldier's retreating heels and blasted him into the air, the heat was intense enough to sear the flesh along his spine as the thermal energy phased through his armor.

He roughly collided with the remains of his barricade and crashed into the slipspace bomb.

The screen fizzed out and he felt a section of the cover give way under his weight.

What damage was caused he remained oblivious to as he was far too busy scrabbling for a weapon. His gloved hand found the grip of his rifle and he rolled onto his injured back, bouncing ineffective rounds of the lumbering mountain smashing its way towards him.

Beside him, the bomb started to glow with a muted blue light and the deck trembled beneath him. Radiation warnings screamed in his helmet and the spartan began to feel nauseous.

As the hunter continued its advance, intent on splattering the spartan against the deck with its shield, the hanger shuddered violently, toppling it.

Six's HUD was overrun with static and his shields were promptly sapped by some unknown force. The spartan's body shuddered as he felt every molecule of his very being vibrating at an inconceivable rate.

Suffering from similar effects, the hunter squealed, its colony sloughing off its body in puddled clumps, literally shaking itself to death.

Six clawed away from the slipspace device, trying to escape the agonizing sensation of his body tearing itself apart. He likened the pain to the augmentation procedure he had undergone ten years ago, his nerves aflame with napalm and his bones like shattered glass.

In an agonized crawl, he dug his gauntlets into the deck and doggedly forced his way to the sabre. It had better radiation shielding than his MJOLNIR and even in his pain hazed state, Six knew it was his only chance of survival. The spartan's mind was in disarray, but his instincts simply would not allow him to give up and die. They urged him onwards, clinging to anything that might keep him alive to keep fighting. They did not care that this was to be his final act.

Driven by primordial instinct alone, Six latched onto the sabre's wing and tugged himself inside, closing the canopy and throwing the shields into overdrive.

As his awareness began to fade, he heard the bomb detonate violently with a rush of white noise, bludgeoning him into dark oblivion.

His sabre was tossed about like a child's toy and sent careening out of the now doomed corvette and into the fickle tides of slipspace. The covenant ship collapsing in upon itself and imploding, the shockwave further throwing the spartan's fighter into mystery.

If he had been conscious, all Noble Six would have seen was a wall of strangling darkness blanketing his tiny ship.

The sabre drifted in the timeless expanse of spacial disorder for what could have been an eternity or only a few moments. There was no real meaning of time in a realm that defied all understanding and reason.

But a certain event far off in the future, involving an arc and a malfunctioning halo array sent a massive slipspace wake through the dimensions, shaking the small fighter craft out of its time-locked slumber and jetting into parts unknown.

Private Darwin Ford swiveled idly in his chair, fatigued eyes scanning the monitor of the listening post's radar for the thousandth time that day. And unsurprisingly for the thousandth time, saw that no unknown contacts had neared Corneria's gravity well.

All was quite as usual since the Lylat wars had ended. Venom hadn't made so much as a peep in months and the system was slowly recovering from the fierce conflict.

The husky ran a paw through his short mane and yawned at the monotony of his posting.

He had joined the army hoping to see action, but he had been too late to participate in the war and now he was here, toiling away on an orbital station above the capital world. It wasn't what he had been hoping for but at least the uniform made up for it. There were quite a few hot numbers down planetside that loved a dog in green.

His next rotation off station was in a week and he was eager to stretch his legs.

Perhaps he would be lucky enough to run into the Starfox Team. He had heard that they were down on Corneria, relaxing after their successful raid against a few pirate forces. He also heard that a few beautiful ladies had joined up recently, longtime friends of the famous vulpine himself, the lucky bastard.

You never know, he might just get to meet them. Wouldn't that be something?

The canine's eyes watched as the green line made another rotation in its unending circle, but a faint beep made him flinch in surprise.

It had never done that before!

Darwin's gut clenched as he saw the unassuming white blip hovering at the edge of the screen's arc, just within radar range.

"Oh shit..."

His paws clattered away at the keyboard in front of him as the grid section with the anomaly was pulled up to superimpose the entire screen. He ran a scan of the unknown and examined the readings as they were displayed.

Composition-Unknown alloys

Classification-Unrecognized

Length-23 space meters

Width-17.5 space meters

Whatever it was, it was actually rather small, little larger than a fighter. The readout wasn't giving him any information on what the thing was, but judging from what he did know, it had to be some kind of ship. And an unknown ship so close to Corneria was a cause for concern, especially since it had seemingly materialized out of nowhere.

Radar stations were capable of picking up warp drive signatures in mid-jump to watch for signs of attack. And if this thing could disguise its drive signature in some way, that was bad. It could be a venomian prototype, or the herald of another invasion. The thought of another war so soon after the first one...

He needed to contact command as soon as possible.

Darwin scrambled for the comms station, his day having taken an interesting and unexpected turn.

Just outside the hustling bustling metropolis of Corneria's capital city, home to billions of content citizens and the heart of a just and noble republic, a small villa stood atop the crest of a hill with a cliffside view of a sprawling crystal clear ocean, the sun's warm rays reflecting off its pristine surface. The villa belonged to Fox Mccloud and the Starfox team, having purchased it after their first victory over Andross' armies.

Now, years later, it was their home away from home and secondary base of operations, used whenever they wanted a break from the lonely and barren expanse of space. At first, only Fox, Falco, Slippy, and Peppy had lived there. But after the events on Sauria and the small rebellion on Katina months prior, three new members had joined, Krystal of Cerinia, Miyu Lynx, and Fay Spaniel.

Krystal had been rescued by Fox on Sauria and decided to pledge her help to the vulpine in recompense. Miyu and Fay had been pilots for the Katina garrison and were old friends of his. After helping them save their world from an Andross wannabe. He had accepted their request to join.

Now, the team had returned to Fox's lodge for some R&R.

Fox himself was in the gym, running on a treadmill with headphones and music plugged into his ears, intending to maintain his physical fitness and keep distracted.

Things had been going slow since the war ended and after the saurian crisis and attempted rebellion, not much of note had happened in the pertaining months afterwards. It was fortunate that they still had some funds leftover after those contracts since work was tight for the moment.

Two hours into his workout, Fox slowed down and shut off the treadmill, hopping off and slinging a towel over his shoulders. Panting softly, he made his way to the small locker room to change into his regular outfit, glad that he had been able to afford the gym expansion to their base. It beat having to take the hour ride back into the city.

The villa had been expensive, but well worth the price. Here they had privacy from all their well-wishers and fans. Don't get him wrong, the fame was awesome, but sometimes it could be overwhelming and more often than not, invasive.

Fox slipped out of the locker room, dressed in his usual attire, a green affair with a white jacket and red knee-high plated boots.

Like the villa, his and the others uniforms were not at all cheap. Each had been personalized to their wearer's exacting specifications and were specially made for fighter combat. With the press of a button on the wrist cuff, the suit would conform tightly to the wearer's body. The lower portion of the suit would clamp down, preventing their blood from pooling in their legs, thus allowing them to endure the high intensity G-forces they were exposed to when flying the arwings.

Everyone had their own variation of this design.

Falco preferred a full body red and black suit that also doubled as a form of body armor. Slippy's was catered more for his mechanical expertise, a yellow and black one that supported a tool belt and accessories that he used when fixing their ships. Fay's was pure white with soft red highlights, and it was jam packed with all manners of gadgets. Miyu, ever the tomboy, had a sleeveless green and black ensemble and a pair of fingerless gloves. Hers had tactical webbing for all the weapons she liked to carry. And Krystal had a simple blue and black bodysuit with flexible armor plating. Peppy had turned down the offer for a suit, having said that he wasn't flying anymore anyways. He had clipped his wings after Krystal joined, feeling that his flying days were far behind him. He was far more content being the mission coordinator along with ROB 64.

Fox had his tailored specifically. There was a small lightweight generator hooked the back of his belt that could create a temporary shield he could use to block incoming attacks for a short time. His boots were weighted to give his kicks more power and his jacket had hemmed pockets on the inside, allowing him to carry extra mags for his blaster.

All that together had almost cost them an arm and a leg, but it was well worth the price.

Picking at the lint on his uniform, Fox made his way through the villa's halls and towards the center, a large circular chamber dubbed the "den". It was the heart of the house, where everyone went to relax and unwind. It had an entertainment center with a TV, the latest game consoles, and a shelf of books for Peppy.

Fox stepped inside and saw that everyone was accounted for.

Slippy and Fay were sitting cross-legged in front of the TV playing some new construction game...Digcraft or something. Fox wasn't very intent on the details, he was more of a shooter type than a builder.

Falco was sitting at the table with Peppy, the avian toiling away at his custom assault blaster, a beast of a weapon, strong enough to melt through tank armor. Peppy was just doing his best to read his book and not get gun oil all over the pages, a small cup of coffee at his side.

Krystal and Miyu were off to one side, chatting as they sat on the sofa, probably gossiping about something or other. The two females had become quick friends, and odd duo in the vulpine's eyes.

Both were nice girls, more than pretty enough, but Fox had Fara, his childhood sweetheart. She was more than enough for him any day of the week, the vulpine grinning at the thought.

Fox went unnoticed as he made his way over to Falco, sitting at one of the spare chairs lying about around the table.

"Sup Fox..." Falco greeted distractedly as he removed a small faintly glowing red gem from the gun's core.

"Good afternoon Fox, I'm glad to see you awake so early. I noticed Fara leaving early this morning and thought for sure you would have slept in later." Peppy added with a brow raised in amusement.

Fox blushed and chuckled weakly, rubbing the back of his head, a habit he had not shaken since he was a kit. "Yeah...right..."

He could see Falco smirking to himself as he rubbed the gem with a cloth.

The hare simply shrugged and licked a finger, flicking a page of his book as he sighed wistfully.

"Ah...the temptation of youth."

"I think those days are behind you old-timer." Falco teased.

"Perhaps...but at least I had them. At this rate you'll reach my age without having done anything at all." Peppy replied smoothly as he took a sip from his caffeinated drink.

The avian glanced up from his cherished weapon and glared at Peppy.

"I'm just bidding my time is all, you'll see."

"Of course...of course, my apologies."

Fox grinned.

The two were always clashing, almost as often as he did with the bird himself. But it was all in good fun.

"I'll just borrow this." He announced as he reached over the table and snagged Peppy's drink, liberating a portion of the pick-me-up into his waiting maw.

"You are a coffee fiend, Fox. You know that?" Peppy muttered with a smile.

"Always have been, always will be." Fox retorted as he took another swig and watched as Slippy and Fay attempted to build what looked like the Great Fox in their game using white wool and grey stone.

Maybe he would try his paw at the game later.

The table vibrated, shaking the vulpine's attention from the screen and he glanced down for the source, discovering that his communicator was buzzing with an incoming call. He read the caller ID and was surprised to see it from General Pepper. He had not spoken with the Bloodhound in weeks, when they had been going over the state of the system. Fox wondered what could be the situation and accepted it, raising a paw for silence.

Once the room quieted down, he spoke.

"General Pepper, what can I do for you?"

"Fox," The aged voice of the canine replied. "I have need of your team's services. There's a situation developing at the edge of the local system. An unidentified contact was picked up on the long range radar. It has mysteriously appeared in system and is composed entirely of materials previously unknown in our region of space. Beltino has been unable to identify its make-up as of yet. Whatever it may be, it has managed to bypass the long range detection grid."

The vulpine widened his eyes in surprise and shared a curious and worried look with his friends. The last time something mysterious had happened, his father was killed and the Lylat wars began.

"What is it you need us for, General?" Falco butted in.

"Currently, most of the CDF home fleet is occupied and any other forces are allocated across the entire system. We're stretched thin, Fox. Your team and ship are the only things close enough to safely investigate the unknown. There aren't many extra funds to relocate since the war's conclusion, but I can promise five-thousand credits now, with twice as much when more is made available.

Fox thought it over. It wasn't a lot of currency, probably the least the team ever received. But he had never turned down a mission from the General, nor did he plan to. And besides that, he wanted to see what it was himself. If it was a threat to the system, he wanted it gone.

"We'll do it, sir." Fox declared confidently.

"As I suspected you would. I can always count on your team, Fox. You have my thanks. Time is of the essence so I advise you to head out as soon as possible. Pepper out..."

Fox looked up from his communicator to his team. "So...are you guys ready for another mission?"

Falco shrugged, carefully reassembling his assault blaster. "Sure, why not."

Peppy rose from his seat. "I'll head down to the Great Fox right now."

Slippy and Fay nodded eagerly, the canine wagging her tail excitedly.

Krystal moved to speak but was cut off when Miyu slapped her back roughly, pushing her forwards. "Krys and I are always ready for a mission, Right?" She asked in a Katininan drawl, looking to her friend with a wide grin.

The demure vixen recovered quickly and shook her muzzle at Miyu reproachfully, the feline's grin widening in response. "Although uncouth, she stands correct."

"Then it's settled." Fox declared, sitting up from his chair. "You all have one hour to prepare and meet up by the hover-car. We'll set out for the starport at one o'clock."

With those final words, the team dispersed to their separate rooms to grab what they needed.

By two, they arrived at the starport and arrived at the dock for the Great Fox. There was no usual hassle to launch the dreadnaught as the port authorities had already been notified of their coming and were waiting to release them.

Within minutes of stepping aboard, Fox had ROB prepare the ship for takeoff. The mechanized steward hooked himself up to his duty station, a console with a line of plugs that ROB interfaced with, giving him instant access to all of the ship's systems. From his console, he was able to manage the entire ship and help the team in combat by taking control of the Great Fox's point defenses and navigation.

After all these years, Fox was still not sure what to make of his robotic team member. He was still debating whether or not he was truly sapient, or if he was just a metal shell hardwired with a specific set of programs.

As the Great Fox launched, the vulpine snapped the four buckled harness across his chest and sagged into the captain's chair as Corneria's gravity sought to keep them tethered to it. Despite the planet's desire, they broke atmosphere and ROB plugged in their coordinates he received via coded transmission from General Pepper.

It was to be a short flight since it was just at the cusp of the local system, no more than a few minutes at full burn of the Great Fox's engines. But it was enough time for idle conversation.

"So...Slip, how's that girl doing, the one you keep talking about, Amanda wasn't it?" Miyu asked of the toad from her buckled positon.

Fox recalled who she was talking about. Slippy had told him and the others about some girl he had met on the net. After the usual teasing by Falco, they had learned that she was a frog and she lived on Aquas, the oceanic paradise and resort. As of yet, they had not met in person, but the amphibian seemed to adamantly believe that she was the one for him.

"S-she's doing fine!" Slippy replied in a stutter and blush.

It seemed the toad regretted blabbing to his friends.

"You should go see her soon, why not after this mission?" Krystal suggested. She was a firm believer in romance, and had been attempting to play matchmaker as soon as she heard about Amanda.

"No, I can't...what if she is disgusted by the sight of me?" Slippy was not an athletic fellow by any stretch of the word, and his jumpsuit was a little too tight on his pudgy frame, but Fox knew he had a great heart and an even better head on his shoulders.

"Hey Slip, if we aren't sickened by the sight of you and we've known you for this long, chances are she won't care." Falco put in his own two cents and version of placating his friend. And as per usual, it was not very comforting.

Slippy grimaced but otherwise chose not to respond.

"Wow Falco, that was really helpful." Fay deadpanned and rolled her eyes.

"Just doing my best..." The avian replied simply.

Fox shook his muzzle and joined Fay's disapproval.

The bird would never change.

Before they could continue, ROB intoned a robotic announcement.

"Attention, approaching unidentified vessel. Standardized CDF shipbuilding classification database designates unknown as a fighter/bomber."

Fox and the others gazed out the bridge's viewport and watched as a strange sight began to manifest itself against the black backdrop of space.

Whatever it was, it did seem like some sort of ship, but not any they had ever seen before. It was small, but still larger than an arwing by several meters and did not follow any current design on record. The foreign ship sported a pair of cylindrical thrusters, one on the end of each wing, reminiscent of turbines locked inside a steel grey circular casing. There was also a pair of dorsal extensions just before the wings protracted out from the main chassis.

And unlike an arwing, its wings were forward-swept, curving towards the nose of the fighter rather than the rear. Another glaring difference beside the wings was the placement of the canopy. Whereas the arwing's cockpit sat at the rear of the fighter just ahead of the engines, this ship's was situated towards the front, along the nose, and in place of a thick transparent sheet of armored glass, it looked to be made of some solid black metallic material, obscuring whatever lay inside.

The ship had not reacted to their presence, apparently either unmanned or playing dead. There was very little chance the pilot had not seen the lumbering dreadnaught looming over them. Yet it did nothing, seemingly only capable of drifting lazily in the vacuum surrounding it.

Fox hummed quietly and rubbed his furred chin, pondering this new development.

There were no venomian markings, or indeed recognizable emblems painted on its hull. There was a marking on the port side, just behind the cockpit, but it was too small to clearly make out.

The vulpine looked over his shoulder towards his android companion.

"ROB, open a short range channel with the ship on all frequencies, let's make sure they hear us."

"Opening short range unencrypted channel...channel open."

Fox nodded and cleared his throat before speaking clearly and authoritatively.

"This is Fox Mccloud, captain of The Great Fox. Identify yourself."

As his voice faded, they waited for a response, but the minutes dragged on.

"Maybe no one's home?" Falco proposed after five minutes of silence.

"ROB, scan the other ship for life signs." Fox ordered, wondering if Falco's hypothesis was true. If so, it might be an unmanned craft, but then why did it have need of a cockpit?

"Scanning...Scanning..." The light on ROB's bar-like optics flashed back and forth as the machine worked, stopping after a few moments."Scan complete, single lifeform detected. Warning! Vital signs are dangerously low. Recommend medical treatment as soon as possible."

Fox was alarmed by the announcement, but gathered that it did make a sort of sense. If the pilot was seriously injured, they might not be able to reply.

"What do we do, Fox?" Slippy enquired.

Well, they certainly couldn't just leave them there.

"Looks like we are going to have to bring it in, ROB, prep the medical ward for a patient and arm the tractor beam."

Yet as Fox was speaking, the ship outside suddenly gunned its engines and rocketed off into space, the engines in its rear spewing a trail of blue light.

"What the..." Miyu mumbled in confusion.

"They were playing dead after all." Fay declared with a confused frown on her muzzle. She was curious as to why they would have kept up the charade for so long if they were going to bolt anyways.

Fox was not about to let that ship get away. They still needed answers and the pilot needed help.

"ROB, go after that fighter! I want full power to the engines, and keep the tractor beam ready!" He barked out as he watched the ship zoom away.

The robot complied swiftly and the Great Fox boosted after its target.