CHAPTER 9
Stolen Fate
The next morning
Great Fox, recreation room
0927 hours
 
 
 

     It was the training. It had to be.
     The morning after his party-crashing on Macbeth, Gage acted as if nothing happened, though he had a slightly deeper squint, a darker countenance. Fox expected him to brood, to stay in the guest room and refuse to talk to anyone. He grimly remembered the few days following Vixy’s death, climaxed with him almost eating a bullet by his own hand. No doubt that Falco, sitting across from him at the rec room table, also remembered helping a certain intoxicated fox back to his room. A certain “drunk off his ass” fox was how Falco put it.
     But the captain didn’t seem drunk or suicidal as he strode purposefully into the room, took a seat at the head of the  table, and tossed his laser microphone onto the table. The confused mercenaries stopped their discussion of how to handle Gage if he snapped and stared at him, as if waiting for a second head to grow.
     Gage returned the stare and raised his eyebrows expectantly. “What? Come on, play it. Let’s see if we got what we went for.”
     “You ok?” Fox asked, reaching for the device.
     Gage nodded, but Fox noticed a hard swallow before he did. That’s when he decided it had to be the training. They’re taught not to have emotions, just to do their job. Fox never had that training. In this case, though, he was almost thankful for Gage’s lack of feeling, even if it wasn’t one-hundred percent gone. Their time-frame for finding Overlord was growing thin, according to Ike, and the last thing they needed was Gage breaking down.
     Figuring he should count his limited blessings and not push it, Fox plugged the microphone into the wall viewscreen audio input and set it to playback. Immediately a burst of static filled the room followed by the bantering voices of the officers. Fox took his seat and leaned back.
     “—on schedule! My men are losing morale with all this inactivity.”
     “Overlord IS on schedule, General, as the commander said. Are you questioning his word?”
     “I’m not questioning anything, I’m just saying that the men need a victory.”
     “Well, maybe YOU would like to attack Corneria with the forces we have? We don’t stand a chance!”
     Fox glanced over at Gage as Ike spoke his first words, but noticed no change from the stone expression. The calm voice of the traitor held just as much authority and sureness as the night before, and Fox was amazed. It reminded him of Wolf O’Donnell’s style, but it had something else. Wolf seemed to do what he did out of pure hatred, which didn’t exactly harbor a slow temper. Ike knew what he was doing and was in complete control.
     “A frontal attack will not be necessary anytime soon. Overlord is on schedule, I assure you all, and there will be a demonstration next week. For this, I highly recommend that none of you remain in this city. It’s going to get a little hot…Overlord is our key to success. With it, nothing can stop us.”
     “Now, if there are no other questions about Overlord, we can move on. To close this topic, General Harlan, you are to have two squads of your best engineers report to Rogara Outpost no later then Thursday. We’ll need them to help with Overlord’s little surprise. Is that clear?”
     “Yes, Sir.”
     “Alright, now—“
     The speech cut off abruptly as a loud thud echoed through the room, followed by gunshots and shattered glass. Then the audio feed cut off altogether.
     Gage leaned back in his chair, his poker face still on, and shrugged. “That last bit’s new to me also. I wasn’t exactly paying attention right before I slipped.”
     “Good thing you kept it on,” Fox replied, flicking the microphone off. “Alright, so now we know where Overlord is being built. We also know we have six days to find it and throw a wrench in the works.”
     “Great, so what are waiting for?” Falco asked, half rising from his seat.
     “It’s not that easy,” Gage replied softly, his calm voice disturbingly similar to his brother’s. He slowly rocked in the chair and stared straight ahead as he spoke. “Fox will side with me on this one. If there’s one rule about weapons, it’s that the next version will always be superior to the original. Even if we do find it, it’ll be bigger, more armed, more protected, and more impossible to get into. Not to mention the numerous civilians being used as labor who are bound to be there. Not to mention this ‘surprise’ that Ike was talking about. Not to mention that crazy bodyguard he has. Do I have to go on?”
     Falco was stubborn for sure, but even he saw the sense in avoiding Gage’s impressive list of hazards and took his seat again, folding his arms. Fox also wasn’t too eager to meet the cheetah again and hated to think that the rest of Gage’s speech was one-hundred percent true. Suddenly, his infiltration of the first Overlord seemed in the same league as walking to the corner store.
     “So what’s our next move?” Fox asked out loud, more to himself than his partners.
     “First we call General Pepper,” Gage replied, his empty gaze still fixed on the blank white wall across the room. “Then we pay Stefan another visit, to see if he knows anything about this surprise, or that cheetah.”
     Fox grimaced at the thought of another pleasant chat with Stefan, but he didn’t object. His qualms for seeing Stefan didn’t seem so bad when put up against Gage’s current conflict, so he decided to suck it up for one last time. Falco didn’t care either way; he knew he would be staying back to watch the ship again.
     Fox unplugged the microphone from the viewscreen and punched in Pepper’s number. After one ring, the general answered.
     “Ah, McCloud, I was just about to call you.”
     “Oh?”
     “Yes,” Pepper continued, glancing at a piece of paper on his desk then looking at Fox in a slanted manner that StarFox had dubbed the ‘trouble look.’ Once again, the theory was proven right. “I received a report this morning from the Macbeth City police. They say there was heavy gunfire in an office building, and then a tank drove down the street and crashed through the building. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
     The last sentence wasn’t a question, but more of an explanation demand. Fox figured the general would forgive him once he heard what they discovered, so he told the entire story of the night before. Pepper listened with rapt attention while Gage sat and continued his staring contest with the table.
     “It was Ike…” Pepper breathed with surprise when Fox concluded. “Are you absolutely sure?”
 Fox nodded towards the sullen figure of Gage and raised his eyebrows. Pepper nodded in understanding. If there was any prayer, any hope that Gage could cling to that would make it all false, he would’ve done it.
     “Agreed,” Pepper said after clearing his throat. “Go see what else Chuzie knows. While you do that, I’ll scramble whatever forces we have in the Venom area and try to get Macbeth City evacuated, though I don’t see that happening without much chaos.”
     “You’re the general, General,” Fox replied, reaching for the screen. “We’ll be in touch.”
     Pepper nodded and Fox cut the connection.
 
 

     * * *
 
 

Later that day
Corneria City
1417 hours
 
 

     Fox could barely remember the last time he had gone to Corneria City for a reason other than visiting his personal demon or breaking into an army headquarters. He used to love visiting the city on weekend leave from the Academy, or with his parents for shopping or such. Those were the days when he could take a second to stop and look around, to appreciate the little things in life.
     That all went up in flames along with his mother’s car.
     Now, standing and waiting for Gage outside a huge metal bunker-like building and watching the bustle of city life, Fox longed for those days. Ever since he put on the mask of the mercenary, every day could’ve been a fight for his life or the life of someone close to him. Most fights he won…and some he lost. Thinking back to Vixy made Fox realize that his last real good time in the city was with her, when they went for groceries for the Great Fox and stopped for dinner…his last expression of carefree love with the victim of his most trying loss.
     Fox’s daydream was cut off at the sound of the heavy metal door slamming behind him. Gage navigated the flowing stream of pedestrians and joined Fox by the curb, shaking his head. Fox noticed his partner was receiving quick glances from the passing civilians because of his uniform; the urge to daydream of his Academy days, when he was the recipient of those glances, was suppressed as Gage spoke.
     “He’s not here. According to the guy in the prison, he had a meeting with his lawyer to seal the death-row pardon. He should be back any minute.”
     Fox nodded. The entire process with Stefan had gone smoothly; he had been transferred to the lower-security prison in the city the day after their meeting. It made Fox bitter, made him feel like he was the loser in their vendetta. But he supposed, in a terrible way, it worked out for the best. After all, Stefan had probably played a very significant role in saving millions of lives. Without his information, Fox and Gage would still be in the dark.
     Gage sighed and gazed up at the skyscrapers. “I used to live a few blocks from here, in an apartment above a corner store. Every day, the store owner would give me and Ike a free donut on our way to school. Great guy…”
     “Seen him since you left?” Fox asked, mostly to keep conversation as a distraction from his own thoughts.
     “He’s dead,” Gage replied bluntly. “I was in school when the first attack came. Complete chaos, people running everywhere, fighters in the sky, tanks on the ground. The building across the street collapsed onto the store…with my mother in the apartment. Took them weeks to dig through the debris.”
     “The building across the street just collapsed?”
     “No, it was pushed over, by some kind of big red machine. Tank treads, drills or something for arms. It was already to the next block when I got home. I got there just in time to see it destroyed…by one of your team. Well, an Arwing anyway.”
     Fox nodded. He remembered the metal beasts, powerful enough to knock over a building. “Too little, too late.”
     “Yeah…” Gage’s voice trailed off as he continued his gaze.
     After a few minutes, Fox glanced over and saw that Gage’s eyes had the same distant look as they had back on the ship. They were the eyes of a virtuous man torn apart by a personal evil. Fox never had siblings, but his teammates were as close as you could get without being of the same blood…and he could never imagine having to fight against one of them, turned traitor. The strong, stubborn, vigorous Gage that Fox had the pleasure of meeting in the headquarters cafeteria was all but gone, worn out by the pressure and torment of his situation. It all seemed too familiar…
     That’s when Fox remembered the note.
     It was the only thing that kept him going months before, the only thing that gave him new life and the strength to finish the feud with Stefan. As his hand closed around the folded piece of paper in his pocket, Fox muttered the words he had expressed to Peppy and Vixy in his time of torment, his time of what Gage was feeling now.
     “Am I doing the right thing?”
     Gage’s head snapped up and he looked at Fox sideways. “What?”
     “That’s what you’re thinking isn’t it?”
     Gage nodded and faced front again. “Obviously, the right thing is to stop him from using the most powerful weapon in the galaxy, but…but…”
     “But he’s your brother.”
     Gage nodded again and stayed silent.
     “I know I can’t really speak from experience, as far as brothers go,” Fox continued. “But I do know this. The fact that he’s your brother changes nothing. He’s still a dangerous madman. Hell, he even tried to kill you, and he’ll do it again. You said it yourself; the Ike that was your brother is dead. Here.”
     Fox grabbed Gage’s wrist and slapped the note into his hand. “Read it when we get back to the ship. It pointed me in the right direction, and it might do the same for you.”
     Gage looked at the yellowed folded paper in his palm, shrugged, and pocketed it. ”Ok.”
     After another minute of silence, Fox opened his mouth to ask what time it was but was interrupted as Gage pointed at the intersection a hundred yards away. An armored truck was stopped at the light.
     “Looks like your friend’s almost here.”
     Fox shook his head and sighed. “Hope you’re up to talking again, ‘cause I’m not in the mood to deal with this bastard. How did—“
     His words were cut off as the front of the truck erupted in a deafening explosion and the entire vehicle was lifted in the air on a pillar of fire. It crashed back down on its side among the fleeing civilians.
     Fox gaped at the site while Gage cursed and sprinted for the burning wreckage. Through the thick smoke, they could see pedestrians running from the fire, abandoning their cars and stumbling, wide-eyed, towards the sidewalks. But there was one who didn’t, one who went towards the truck…a cheetah in dark clothes, holding a blaster.
     “Fox! It’s him! It’s the cheetah!”
     Fox squinted through the smoke at Gage’s call and saw that he was right. The same cheetah that had almost done him the favor of ventilating his head was calmly walking towards the truck. Fox ran and caught up with Gage as he neared the debris. Without missing a beat, Charon flung the rear door open and fired three times inside.
     “Drop it!” Gage shouted, his blaster trained on Charon’s head. Fox halted next to him and followed suit.
     Charon faced them, seeming not the least bit surprised to see them. He pointed his gun at the back of the truck and spoke his first words to the duo. “You wouldn’t have gotten any more information out of him anyway. He was just a pawn.”
     “And what are you?” Fox growled.
     “A prisoner,” Charon replied, his angry red eyes seeming to glow again. “But a useful one. I have my own reasons for doing what I do, and it’s none of your concern.”
     “I think Overlord is a slight concern for us.”
     “Then do us all a favor.” Charon pulled something out of his pocket and tossed it at Gage’s feet. “Kill the commander.”
     “What?” Gage said, cocking an eyebrow. “Why do you want him dead?”
     “I told you, my own reasons.” Charon snapped his head to the side as police sirens began wailing down the street. “And I can’t do it myself; he’s watching me too closely.”
     “Wait!” Fox shouted as the cheetah turned his back on them, “Then why did you try to kill me? Two more inches down, and…”
     Charon half-turned with a humorless grin and said simply, “If I wanted to kill you, I would have.”
     In the next instant, he had vanished into the frantic crowd.
 

                -Chapter 10 coming soon!-