Star Fox – Cerinia Chronicles

Written because a hero deserves a second chance, and a world deserves not to die for the sake of an instruction booklet.

Mission 1 – Hero for hire (slightly foxed)

Fox McCloud drifted his Arwing II towards the massive bulk of the Beltino Orbital Gate, or rather the space station that generated it, and housed Corneria's main R&D complex. All instruments read nominal, a text-book orbital transfer manoeuvre. Space all around was illuminated by the energy trails of other ships, and in the distance the gate itself was open, a wash of emerald green. A convoy of freighters were entering with a watchful cruiser seemingly herding them along, it's IFF beacon shining on his ship's scanners.

It seemed impossible that less than two years ago, this place had been the scene of a desperate battle with the Aparoids. But the Lylat system had recovered quickly from the effects of the invasion, and gone on to greater things. As he swung round and lined up on the station himself, the holo-interface opened up a floating display window with a ping. It showed the red and blue hatching of an incoming contact, and an identifying text bar. He tapped the box to accept it.

"Incoming craft on vector nine four, this is Beltino Gate Space Traffic Control. Please identify craft and destination." The speaker was a sharp muzzled collie girl, quite good looking in a starched, neat edged sort of way. Her voice was calm and controlled, but her eyes widened towards the end as she took in exactly who was on her line.

"Beltino Gate STC, this is Star Fox 1, bound for Corneria R&D facility. My authorisation code is Alpha Echo three five." Fox stated. "Please advise course and heading."

The hound girl's professional detachment slipped. "Uh, yes sir… code confirmed, please switch your navigation beam to channel 19, that's one, niner. Come about to 23 mark 127. You have a clear run in on docking bay 12."

"Thanks, and could you let Professor Beltino know I'm coming?" He flashed her a smile, and she blushed slightly.

"I'll see to it, Captain McCloud… and you're welcome!" The comm line ended and as her face disappeared, so did Fox's smile. Since their defeat of the Aparoid queen, Team Star Fox, and most especially Fox McCloud, had cemented their reputation as honest to gosh heroes. Unfortunately, the team in question no longer existed.

Falco had been unhappy with escort work and bored with hunting down two bit pirates, and had left once again. Peppy Hare had taken over General Pepper's job, and even Slippy, Fox's buddy since they were together at Corneria Flight Academy, was no longer aboard. He had met up with a girl named Amanda during an engineering symposium and ended up spending more and more time with her. He'd eventually left to live with her on Aquas, working for a defence contractor.

But most of all, Krystal… he'd wanted to protect her, keep her safe, and as a result made the biggest mistake of his life. To say she'd reacted badly to his intention to take her off flight duty was like saying Solar was 'a bit warm'. He still remembered the end of that final conversation, where he'd tried to explain. Heck, he'd never been able to forget it.

'Please Krystal, I'm just trying to protect you. I… care about you, and I don't want to see you get hurt.' Even after all they'd been through together, he still couldn't say what he really wanted to. He even kept a tight grip on his feelings against her sensing what he felt, and not returning it.

The azure vixen had stared him right in the eyes, her voice lacking it's usual warmth. 'I can take care of myself, Fox. Protecting others has always been what I wanted to do, and as a part of Star Fox I have the chance to make a difference! If I choose to put my life on the line to do so, that's _my_ decision!'

He'd shaken his head, trying to think of a way to stall her. 'No, as leader of Star Fox, it's mine!'

She'd just glared at him, then run off the bridge, blue tail streaming behind her. Well, he'd gotten her off the team alright, off the team, off the Great Fox II and out of his life, and he'd been unable to find where she'd gone.

Now he wandered the Lylat system with ROB 64 and the Great Fox II, doing jobs as they came, taking it one day at a time and all the while keeping up the public face of the great Fox McCloud he was expected to be, and every day felt less like. Heck of an epitaph for a hero.

He'd lined up on the beam, and guided his ship in on mental auto-pilot, and now the fighter was passing through the atmosphere screen into the brightly lit bay with a large number 12 on the floor. A fennec fox with a pair of illuminated batons waved him over to a fighter sized landing area on the far side of the bay.

A familiar, bespectacled figure was walking up, escorted by a gaggle of bay techies. As the fighter's systems shut down, Fox popped the canopy and climbed down over the side. Once he'd have jumped down, but somehow he didn't feel like it any more.

The elderly toad held out a webbed hand. "Fox! Good to see you again!"

The vulpine pilot took the proffered hand and shook. "You too… It's been some time. So, you said on the comm you had a job that needed my skills?"

The toad nodded eagerly enough that his glasses went askew. As he adjusted them, he replied, "Indeed, indeed! Come with me to my office, and I'll fill you in on the details."

Fox walked with Beltino to a bay hatch, and into an open transit tube where a transfer platform waited. As they were whisked along, Fox asked, "So, heard anything from Slippy lately?"

"Oh, yes, I talked to him not a week ago. His work is going well, dark matter extinction events… it actually ties into my own latest project…" He looked around with an exaggerated sense of caution. "… But that can wait until we reach my office. What else, oh, he and Amanda are getting on like a house underwater, even thinking of moving into a place together…"

Anyone a mite more perceptive than Beltino would have stopped at the tight lipped expression that crossed Fox's face, or the way his tail tip twitched. But unfortunately, he wasn't.

"You know, I'm surprised he hasn't told you this himself. I know how close you two are."

Fox had the urge to respond, 'Not any more!', but he suppressed it. After all, it wasn't the fault of this kindly, if more than slightly dotty old professor that it hurt. It was his own fault for picking at barely healed scar tissue.

Instead he commented, "Well, what with my moving around, I'm only occasionally in range of a relay node, and if Slippy's saving for a house, I can understand him not wanting to lay down the cash for a direct hyper-com beam. Especially from Aquas."

It wasn't an answer, a recorded datagram would have stored and forwarded to the Great Fox II when he was in range of a relay. But it seemed to satisfy the professor, who's mind was on clearly on other things, anyway.

When they'd entered the office, and the door had sealed, Beltino moved over to a display table and punched several icons that hovered proud of the surface. The professor nodded approvingly at the resultant displays that were presumably polarised only in the professor's direction, because Fox could see nothing.

"Good, we can talk safely now." The room darkened slightly, and a detailed holo-projection appeared over the table. It was some sort of roughly cylindrical device, but without reference points Fox honestly couldn't tell if it was a micro-component or a space station.

Beltino beamed. "My latest creation! The Beltino micro-gate generator…" Seeing Fox's head pivot slightly to one side with a quizzical expression, he added. "Basically, it's a self contained version of my orbital gate generator. It could be carried by a ship as small as a space fighter, and provide it with a transport gate to anywhere in the galaxy."

Despite himself, Fox was impressed. Transfer technology allowed you to transport things short range, say between a planet and orbit, but for space travel you were stuck with certain options. Even with G-Diffusers and dark matter reactor drives, it took several Cornerian Standard (CS) hours to travel a single Cornerian Orbital Radius, the mean distance between Corneria and Solar.

Hyper-drives allowed you to go the same distance in a fraction of a second, but they were also expensive to buy and maintain. They also had high power consumption and were themselves more massive than any fighter, or indeed most shuttle craft, so they could only be mounted on a capital ship. Part of the reason there was work for mercenaries was the fact that most in-system freighters found it more cost effective to travel through normal space and hire escorts than mount one.

However, for longer ranges, hyper-drives had until recently been the only way to fly. Beta, the binary companion star that Sauria orbited, was maybe 500 COR away on average. Most military grade hyper-drives, clocking about a kilo-light (1000 times light speed) could make that distance in under a minute. By comparison, the nearest stars were maybe 1000 times as distant, and could be reached in just over a day.

Now the Beltino Gate had changed all the rules. It could send you anywhere it was targeted to, however distant, and with zero travel time. Up until now, Fox had always assumed that needing a machine the size of a large space station was part of the requirements, but it appeared not. Having that capability on a fighter would prove a massive strategic advantage.

"Now that _is_ amazing, professor." Fox said, without any reservations. "But surely the Cornerian Defence Force has test-pilots who'd bob their tails and shave off half their fur to get a shot at testing this…"

"Oh no! It's not for test, not yet, not with a piloted ship anyway. Your job is simply to transport it to the test base in Sector X, where it will be fitted to the test craft."

"Uh… I hate to tell you this, but my new Arwing doesn't have a cargo compartment." Maybe the Professor had heard from Slippy about the modifications his old ship had back during the Sauria mission.

"Oh, I know, I know." Beltino nodded, and tapped a few hovering buttons. The device became enclosed in a wire frame aero-shell, which opaqued and slotted in on an external hard-point on the underbelly of a wire frame Arwing II. Measurements popped up. The package massed about 8 standard tons, and was three standard metres long by one wide, a quarter as long as the Arwing.

It wasn't exactly lightweight, but Fox could compensate with proper adjustment of the G-Diffusers, and running his drive slightly hot. It would prevent him carrying or picking up missiles. However, since he'd be running this mission without the Great Fox, there'd be no-one to re-supply him anyway.

The toad scientist continued. "It can be easily fitted under your Arwing's ventral hull, and it has an auto-jettison system if needs must."

Fox's ears pricked up. "And why would that be?" he asked, cautiously.

"Well, the only way to get the necessary energy density was to use hyper-dense meta-stable plasma…"

"Like a Nova Bomb?" Fox exclaimed. There was a reason you picked them up in space rather than carrying them on your fighter. Once unpacked from their bulky confinement modules, the things were nastily unstable, and the less time you were next to one, the better.

The professor shook his head, almost losing his glasses again. "Not in the least. It has an energy release capacity of 15 times a standard Nova bomb. But it's alright, the system is in a confinement module which is designed to hold it indefinitely, and it takes a massive charge of energy applied in exactly the right way to trigger gate creation. It's guidance programming isn't even formatted."

"So you have the quick release because…"

The elderly toad looked surprisingly stern for a moment, staring at the taller male over his glasses. "We've covered every possibility we can think of. That should hopefully cover the unforeseen ones."

Fox nodded. "Nice to know. But I'd have expected something this high priority to go through the Gate, or be transported by a battle-group."

The toad shook his head. "Passing it through the Gate would destabilise it. And this entire project is top secret. Besides, a dummy convoy _is_ travelling to the test base, and according to the records, you're just here to pick up some equipment my nephew built. In normal space, your Arwing is the best option. Even the Great Fox II would attract too much attention."

"Hmm. Sounds like a Peppy plan." Fox stated. The professor might fly up to, or rather, swim down to depths of thought no other creature could, but when it came to the real world, he was sometimes reduced to a doggy paddle. This scheme was too sneaky for him. And that meant 'General' Peppy probably originated it. The old hare had been Star Fox's tactical co-ordinator for a reason.

Beltino's reaction showed he'd struck gold. Fox continued, "Thought so. Any reason beyond normal caution for the bait and switch?"

"Well…" The scientist was clearly ill at ease. "Details of the project may possibly have leaked, and you can imagine what something like this could do in the wrong hands. But security is as tight as possible, so there should be no way for them to find out about your flight."

"Should? So to sum up, I'm to carry an experimental device with the damage potential of a planetary bombardment missile across the system, strapped to my hull, possibly having to fight hordes of pirates as I go?"

Beltino seemed to sag slightly. "You won't do it?"

"I never said that, I just wanted to make sure I had all the details first." He grinned, but felt less easy than he'd expected. The old boy was a decent guy, and didn't deserve to be baited. He tried to move to a more business-like tone. "So, give me the details."

Kitty Hawk base was deep in the nebula, protected by isolation and it's own defences. The fee was high, enough to run the Great Fox II for a long time, and the job sounded risky enough to be interesting. Falco wasn't the only one bored of escort duty. Beltino shut off the security screen and made the arrangements with the bay foreman. By the time they returned the pod was almost fixed in place.

Fox stopped for a second, looking it over. As the professor had said, it was amazingly compact, only half again as long as he was tall, and nestling in between the lower G-Diffusers with decimetres between the lower edge and the ground. As the pair approached, the techies looked up from what they were doing, clearly surprised. One tiger-striped feline techie jerked up, looking panicked, and nearly dropped his spanner into the G-Diffuser.

"Woah, be careful! I've gotta fly that." Fox exclaimed, mock seriously. The poor techie looked so worried that Fox took pity. "Hey, it's okay! No harm done."

As soon as the head tech gave clearance, he scrambled into his cockpit, and prepped for take-off. Signalling traffic control, he dusted off with a casual salute to Beltino and the tech types who were still around. He contacted Rob and told him to meet the Arwing off Sector X after the delivery. His dark matter reactor mass was topped up, so he could do about 5 COR point to point under power, and this flight was well within that.

A simple point to point in space was something he could do in his sleep. In fact, once he was clear of Corneria orbital space, he did just that, trusting to his Slippy upgraded sensors to warn him of anything significant within a ten thousand standard kilometres, long before his mark 1 eyeballs would spot anything. He set the alarm to wake him an hour before reaching Sector X. He definitely wanted to be alert when he had to navigate the energy fields that pervaded the region.

But he didn't drift off immediately. Long normal-space patrols gave you time to think, even when you didn't want to. What was with him lately? He should feel proud when he saw the activity around the Gate, after all he was responsible for it still being there. And flirting with that Collie flight controller, using his fame to get special treatment, had he really sunk that low?

Well, it wasn't just that, talking, really talking to girls had always been one of his worst skills, which was one of the reasons he used his 'hero' persona. The great Fox McCloud could airily dismiss the nervousness the real Fox McCloud always felt, by not really allowing a conversation to go anywhere.

Krystal had been the first to beak through that reserve since Miyu, a fellow student at the Flight Academy. A tomboyish lynx, enthusiastic and outgoing, she'd originally come to him for assistance on Tactical Theory, but had stuck with him. The lynx and her spaniel friend, Fay, had formed a social group with Fox and Slippy, and had managed to get the overly focussed young fox to stop and smell the roses occasionally.

He'd had to leave to restart Star Fox under Peppy's tutelage, and Slippy had loyally followed him, despite Fox's protests that he shouldn't wreck his career. He had at least managed to convince Miyu to stay her course. She'd graduated and gone into a CDF squadron, but they'd kept in touch.

As Fox had slowly raised the reputation of Star Fox, it had seemed more and more likely that Miyu and Fay would join up after their tour of duty, and the close friendship between him and the lynx might become something more. Then Venom had attacked. Miyu's squadron had been on patrol near Macbeth. When the Venomian fleet had come in to take the manufacturing planet, they had fought a desperate battle against impossible odds.

Miyu's strategy had allowed them to punch a hole in the attackers to allow the evacuation transports to escape. Her skill and courage had won both her and Fay the Lylat Star, the military's highest honour, but posthumously. What made it worse was that just days before, Fox had chosen an escort mission for Climate Controller parts to Fichnia over one for luxury foods to Macbeth. The first was higher paying and higher prestige. If only he'd taken the other, he might have been there, might have prevented…

After that Fox had avoided anything that looked like a potential relationship. At least until a certain blue vixen had punched through his apathy. He'd been fascinated by her from the first instant he saw her, suspended in that crystal at the peak of the Krazoa palace. In the aftermath of the Saurian crisis, it had seemed only polite to offer her a place to stay, especially after some incautious questions had revealed she didn't _have_ a home-world to go back to, or any means to go elsewhere. That's what he'd told himself, at least.

Initially, Krystal had been a curious mix of technological innocent and sophisticate. Flying in the shuttle, or the Great Fox hadn't worried her, but she'd had to have light switches and wash-rooms explained. Oh yes, _that_ had been one of the more embarrassing moments of his life. Krystal had adapted quickly though, and certainly to things like long, hot showers and ultrasonic fur dryers. It had become a standing joke on the Great Fox that when you saw Krystal heading for the wash-room with a basket of bath supplies, you signalled Rob to reduce the main drives to half speed to free up energy capacity.

She'd seen them using the simulators to keep up their skills, and had asked to try them. Her dexterity and quick intelligence had rapidly made her a more than competent pilot, and it wasn't long before she joined the team formally. All the time Fox convinced himself that it was only good sense to have an expert pilot on the team who was also telepathic. From the start, she'd been grateful to Fox, not just for providing her with a place to stay, but for destroying Andross. It seemed she'd been seeking the one who'd destroyed her planet, and Andross's diseased mind was instantly recognisable. That was why she'd grabbed the staff and started blasting when the mad monkey reincarnated.

Living in such close quarters, he'd gotten to see many facets of her personality. She could be generous and warm hearted, but never soft where she spotted an injustice. Her calm demeanour and stern common sense had quickly quashed the occasional hazing contests between Slippy and Falco, at least while she was around. Determined and independent, she was still able to gracefully ask for assistance when she needed it. She took delight in finding out about the system she now lived in, and yet…

There had always been a reserve about her, an unwillingness to fully confide in anyone, even Fox, about her history before Sauria. She hid a deeply hurt part of herself away, and nothing Fox had been able to do could bring it out, to comfort and heal her. And as he'd grown to care about what he could see, he'd wanted more and more to be the one to break past that reserve, soothe those emotional scars. Still, he convinced himself that it was because they were close friends, and team mates.

He had wondered if they could be more, but he'd held back. At times it seemed Krystal's actions towards him were more than those of a close friend, but he'd worried he'd simply mistaken gratitude and comradeship far something more. And there were two other factors. Her initial medical scans had given her approximate age between 18 and 20. Fox was 28 at the time, not an impossible gap, but definitely a difference.

To a lesser extent, he was the commanding officer of the team, so a relationship would be improper. It mattered much less than in the regular army, but while discipline and the chain of command bound them much less tightly, it was still there. So even after the Aparoid invasion, when it became clearer and clearer how _he_ felt at least, he'd suppressed those feelings in her presence.

It had ultimately been those feelings, and the increasing worry about her safety, that had led to the eventual disaster. As the others had left, as they took more and more missions as a pair, and had several close escapes. He'd finally decided that the only way to avoid another Miyu was to take all future missions solo. So he'd asked to see her…

He fiercely told his meandering mind to shut up, before he re-cycled that last scene again. She probably hadn't thought of him as anything more than a friend, and flight leader, and besides, it was done. He should really stop moping and get over it, and the feeling that he'd been abandoned by all his friends. He hadn't exactly made it easy for them to keep in touch.

He should be _happy_ that Slippy had a job he loved, and a girl he loved even more, not envious. Knowing him, he was so deep in his work, he probably had to be reminded to sleep and eat, let alone send Fox a message. Likewise Peppy, the guy had taken a brash young flying cadet, and trained him up into a top pilot. He owed his mentor more than could ever be repaid, and he should be proud that the hare finally had a job worthy of his skills.

As for Falco, that bird was probably living it up somewhere, probably with Kat Munroe, and good luck to him. Even Krystal… She was safer as far away from him as possible. After all, he tended to end up in highly dangerous situations, and as bad as he felt, it would be nothing to how he'd feel if he ever heard her scream fade because her cockpit no longer held atmosphere.

He glanced at the compacted staff he carried in his cockpit as a keepsake and a reminder of better times. It had been one of the few things Krystal had been carrying in her Arwing when the original Great Fox crashed, and when she'd left the successor craft, she'd left it behind as well. Of course, without making trips to Sauria to recharge it, it was only an ornate paperweight.

He growled softly to himself. She'd broken with her past, started anew. Maybe he should do the same. He should be glad his legions of fans couldn't see the pitiable funk he'd ended up in. Next he'd be dying his fur black, and spouting bad poetry in dimly lit coffee shops on Zoness.

After he'd completed this mission, he'd do something about his situation. Use the money from this job to load up the Great Fox II with supplies and go interstellar. He'd helped create a solar system where he was no longer needed. Maybe out there he could find someone who did, find a challenge, and his sense of purpose… With a plan of action in mind, he finally dozed off.

Authors Notes: This first part was rather short on action, but don't worry, the next one will make up for it, I promise. This first part is set a few weeks before the Anglars make the scene, but diverges from the canon because I don't have much info on Command, and I don't want to make any more mistakes than I inevitably have already. And in case you're wondering about that dedication, in the intro text to Star Fox Adventures, it only says Krystal's parents were dead. In the instruction manual, it says she's the last survivor of her entire planet …

It appears Lylatians use the metric system, at least I saw specs for the Landmaster that looked like they came straight from the game, which used 'sm', which I translate as standard metres'. For nerds like myself, the COR is about 200 million kilometres, or 1.3 AU (Astronomical Units – the mean distance between Earth and the sun). This puts Corneria almost as far from Solar as Mars is from the Sun, but Solar must be a bright F type star to have such a wide habitable zone anyway, rather than our own suns weaker G2 type. Also, it's surface temperature is "over 9000!" and our own sun is around 6000 degrees kelvin. (If they're using metric measurements, kelvin is appropriate).