A Stone Drag Part 2 by Silla
A Stone Drag
A tale of the twisted genius behind an abomination and the words of the mighty before the wise
Part 2: I've Got That run-down Feeling
Chapter 5
O Yes, Precious
"..You can come on hard cold roads to the very gates of his country. Lots of his people will be they're looking for guests, very pleased to take them straight to him, O yes. His Eye watches that way all the time. It caught Sméagol there, long ago." Sméagol, from The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
The bio-weapon's true name was Jimlenka. Before Andross had turned him into this, he had been a private in the Titanian mines' small reserve army. When the Titanians had been overpowered and captured five months ago, they'd been charged with treason and executed, all except for Jimlenka. Andross had bigger plans for him.
If Jimlenka had still been able to think for himself, he would have cursed the name of Andross. In his present state, he could easily escape Andross, and maybe, if he dared, even go after the ape himself. But Andross's mind link erased any possibility of that. Jimlenka's entire essence had been forced into a back corner of his mind, and there it festered, not being strong enough to do anything. Jimlenka (his friends used to call him "Jimmy") had never had a very strong will. He was smart enough, but not a genius; he was nobody's fool, but never seemed to protest things he knew were wrong. And he was big. Andross had chosen him for his newest freak show because he was practically the ideal candidate. The ape would have been stupid to choose anyone else.
So here he was a mindless chunk of rock prowling around on Fortunese dirt trying to exterminate a sniveling company of woodland critters. His name under Venomian files was "Gerdendrul". A stupid code-name.
So far his anchor in Katt's mind hadn't managed to learn anything in the critters' camp. She had been unconscious when they took her to the camp, so he still didn't know where it was. On top of that, that stupid bunny had been keeping her so drunk with those infernal sedatives, for the past two weeks that her mind was hardly ever coherent enough for him to make sense of it at all.
The groping tendrils of liquid stone found something and curled curiously around it. Gerdendrul bent his head a little closer. Whatever it was, it was blue.
A feather. It was a feather. Gerdendrul didn't know it was one of Falco's, but nonetheless it was, and as such it had his essence implanted on it, faintly, but there just the same.
Gerdendrul used the powers Andross had implanted in his mind to call to Falco. Even though he wasn't in the system (indeed he wasn't in the galaxy, and was very arguably even in that universe), he managed to catch a weak psychic echo fluttering about just outside the threshold of a black hole a few hundred miles outbound from Fortuna. "What a fool," what was left of Jimmy's real mind said. "If we were free, we wouldn't fly into black holes, oh no, Jimmy. What fools they are, yes, what fools? They don't know how lucky they are. And they don't like poor Jimmy. They try to kill Jimmy. We'll make them crawl, nasty vicious animals, yes, we'll make them crawl." Scattered, gibberish, insane ramblings; but all the same they were not from Andross's implantations and they were profoundly silenced moments thereafter.
He liquefied and flattened the gritty slime that was his body expanding slowly. A lump formed somewhere in it, and then rose and became a long, thin tower, and at the tip of the tower the feather was held. Then feathery shapes sprang from the stone, and a rocky beak jutted out, and within minutes there stood a perfect statue of Falco. Gerdendrul channeled all the psychic energies of this one he had found directly into it, and soon there wasn't just a statue, there was practically a Falco clone. Weaker-minded. But that couldn't be helped. Lastly, Gerdendrul detached a small worm-like rope of stone, which wriggled right through the Falco clone's ear openings and settled in the brain to wait for information.
"So much anger," Jimmy's mind said. "So much pain.... What a nasty crude animal, we doesn't like it, oh no, we doesn't like it at all.... And it hates us, doesn't it, oh yes, hates us. So we hates it right back, doesn't we." Then his thoughts ended abruptly as Andross's influence gained control once more. Gerdendrul looked on.
She was drowning in a thick, rancid sea, and the foul liquid was enveloping her. She couldn't breathe...couldn't move.... Katt opened her mouth to scream, but it was clogged with the disgusting mire before any sound escaped. She choked. It was the bio-weapon again.... Closing in....seeping in.rushing in through her mouth, her eyes, crawling into her ears, the odious creature. Couldn't it leave? Hadn't it done enough already? As it worked further into her ears, the pain was too much. Spluttering and coughing up the slime, she opened her mouth for a final shriek....
And all at once the horrible muggy silence of the rock in her ears, the terrible stifling muddiness covering her nose and mouth, the taste in her mouth.... They were gone, all of them. There was a different kind of silence now. Cold, biting, but peaceful. It was all gone--no, not all gone. The pain was still there. But it had been a dream.
Peppy ran to Katt's cot. "What happened?" He struggled to rub sleep from his eyes--her scream had awakened him alone. Fox and Slippy were feeling no pain and hearing nothing. Bill was dead tired and stone drunk.
She tried to speak. "My ear hurts," she mumbled. "I have something in my ear."
"No, there's nothing in your ear--don't worry...just go back to sleep. Try to go to sleep without the sedative, we're almost out--but don't you worry, just back to sleep, yes, that's it." His soothing words belied his sense of puzzlement. Something in her...ear? Still heavily under the influence of her latest dose of Happy Medicine, she drifted off fairly easily, but Peppy sat up for a while, worrying. There were only three sedatives left, and two weeks of being the only being around in his right mind was starting to take its toll.
"In her ear...." Peppy closed his eyes and pondered her words. Maybe she really does have something in her ear, but what? Peppy wondered. No, he thought to himself reproachfully. No, stupid, remember all those sedatives! Yeah, sure, she really has something in her ear, and there are really pretty colors everywhere, and there are things crawling up the wall... With those thoughts, Peppy fell asleep.
Peppy woke up the next morning with a cramped neck, a sore throat, a fever, and a cough. He wondered what time it was and painfully dragged himself to the tent flap to have a look outside. To his shock and intense worry, the sun was high overhead--it was noon, or a little later. Doubtfully, he turned his head back to the interior of the tent. Everyone was still asleep. Peppy's mouth hung open in disbelief. Still asleep? What kind of lazy bums had he gotten hooked up with?
No, he reminded himself. Katt, Fox, and Slippy had medical excuses. Bill had an excuse as well.
And here he comes now, Peppy thought grumpily.
Radley McCoy paraded into the tent with a bottle of wine. "Hello, brother Hare," he said, eyeing Peppy. "Down on the floor then, aren't you? Hadn't you better get up? It's not right for people your age to be wallowing in the dirt. Your young friends might have some excuse."
Peppy glared profusely. "Now you look here, McCoy, this is my tent and these are my friends and they're all sick now and so am I! Half of it is your fault, so if I were you I wouldn't be so quick to come around here anymore! If all you're gonna do is insult my age and get the only people I have left drunk until they're not fit for anything except to waste oxygen and make the air stink."
To Peppy's surprise, and much to his chagrin, Radley grinned broadly at this. "You always was such a kidder!"
"Always?" Peppy said weakly. "You've only known me for two weeks..."
"Ahh, but it feels like a lifetime. Two lifetimes. In fact, you take so long to do anything that a minute with you is like a lifetime! Now if you're not going to be using this wine, I'll be on my way now." McCoy saluted and marched away through the frozen mostly Petrified Forest.
Peppy just lay there in a daze as all hope slowly drained out of his body.
Falco stayed there in the chaotic but perfectly ordered black hole mass for thirteen days in our time. He tried to get away but also fled from any chance he had to leave. It was a strange experience, to say the least. His mind was completely jumbled up and he could not be sure of anything. I have to get out, he thought with sudden clarity. I'm not ready for this, yet....
Suddenly, he heard the sound of someone singing in a clear voice. Where it came from, he didn't know, but he felt drawn to it. It was a song he knew well from his childhood.
I know a place where fear won't stay
I want to go back there one day
And when I see its fall leaves turn,
I'll know I never shall return.
It is a place of peace and song
The sky is blue and the tears fall long
And when I see it in days of the last
I will know it from my past..
Though I've never seen it, I know it well
That's where my heart shall ever dwell....
And with that sensation, the sensation of hearing, of remembering, he was out. He left that confused state of being and did not go there again as a living creature.
He knew then he was back in his Arwing, but where he was he could not say. He could feel the cool leather of the seat and the clammy plastic of the control stick. The sense of touch was so refreshing that he almost laughed with joy. As it was, he tried to draw in a deep breath and found it very hard to do. Then he realized with a feeling of stupidity and a tinge of panic that the bay doors had jammed and were still open. He had thirty seconds at best before he'd blow up, or worse. He whacked the button that closed the doors with alarming zeal and let his vision slowly return.
Stars spun madly and then sharpened into white-hot points of icy light, planets shimmered into view. He could see the control stick now, not just feel it, and he blinked, his mind still reeling from his incredible experience. He had just enough energy left to guide the battered Arwing into a planet's atmosphere and land it, reasonably safely, before he fell asleep over the control panel and did not awaken for more than a day.
Chapter 6
The Long Way Home
The other night I took the long way home,
Out past the old schoolyard,
It's funny how you keep it all inside,
Dreams they do die-hard.
Peppy could have cried out with despair. The sedatives were gone. All of them. Bill had now officially caught a cold, and that meant there wasn't a single well animal among them. The painkillers were gone as well, and now that the sedatives had finally worn off everyone was awake and in plenty of pain. There was nothing Peppy could do, and there weren't enough cots for everyone, so Peppy lay on the floor all day feeling just as miserable as everyone else did.
He could remember that morning, as clear as the nose on his face. Peppy himself had again woken up first, Katt not long after.
"My ear!" she shrieked as soon as she woke up. "What's in my ear?!"
"Nothing," said Peppy weakly.
Katt had grimaced and held a paw to her ear, wincing. "I don't suppose you have a Q-tip."
"Noooo...."
"What's going on?" Still groggy, Katt looked around the tent.
"Everyone is sick," Peppy explained. "We've been on Fortuna for two weeks."
Katt examined each cot, as if she were taking inventory. "Well, if this is everyone, where's Falco?"
Peppy bit his lip. He didn't want to have to be the one to tell anyone that Falco hadn't reappeared since he had taken the sick pine marten to Corneria a fortnight before. "Falco...uh.... Hasn't come back."
"Eh?" Her mouth dropped open and it hung there stupidly.
"Falco went to take the pine marten to Corneria," Peppy explained patiently, feeling as if something was chewing up the back of his throat. "We haven't heard from him since."
Katt said nothing else. She flopped over in her cot, shoved her face into her pillow, and thought hard. It's like a nightmare, she thought. Stuck on this lifeless hunk of rock and snow, and Falco left and didn't come back. Like what happened after flight school. All the worst moments of my life are reliving themselves, she thought, with a pang of guilt and regret. What's next, getting shot down on Zoness? Getting scarred for life? It's not enough Andross took Falco and Aurelia from me, he has to take them from me twice? Aurelia Javensen, Katt's best friend since elementary school and a commanding officer in the Cornerian Army, had been missing in action for over seven months. Not many people who had disappeared during battle with Venomians ever returned. And when Aurelia had joined the army and Katt had not.... And when Falco had joined up with Star Fox and Katt was left all alone.... It was all Andross's fault, all of it. Everything abominable that had ever happened in her short life was his fault.
Everything.
Curse you, Andross, she finished bitterly. Curse you and all that you stand for. If I have to kill myself to make sure you don't hurt anyone else, she promised the ape, although he couldn't hear her, God help me, I will. She would not allow herself to cry, not here, but the tears came silently.
Falco awoke he knew not how much later. He had been so zonked out before he got here, he hadn't even checked out his surroundings, he realized suddenly. He peered suspiciously out the window to see what kind of rock he'd gotten stranded on. He could see no grass, but he appeared to have landed in a field. The plants about him grew in tall green stalks and some sort of fruit or vegetable seemed to be growing at the top of them, but he couldn't see what it was from inside his Arwing.
Cautiously, he opened the bay doors for a second to see if the air was all right. He closed them immediately and took a deep whiff of what had come inside. A smile spread across his face before he even knew it; the air was fresh and sweet, more so than Corneria's air, which had become choked by smog in the big cities. It was still sweet out in the country, but Falco never got chances to go out there. And it was much better than the air on Great Fox. It was all recycled oxygen up there, and although it was refreshing enough, it often tasted stale to him more so than it did for the others.
"Well, there's no poison in the atmosphere," he said to himself. He said it out loud for no reason in particular, and it was a sudden shock to hear a voice speaking. He said it again, more slowly. "No poison in the atmosphere, but I could have guessed that from all this vegetation. I wonder where I am." He checked his Arwing's fuel supply. Enough, he wagered, to get him about as far as the entryway of Sector Z to Venom. Not enough to be of much use in actual space flight, but enough to do quite a bit of trilling around on one planet.
Before he went flying around looking at stuff, though, he wanted to stretch out. He absentmindedly felt in his jacket pocket, and, to his surprise, the remote control for his Arwing was still there. He clicked the button and the top of the Arwing popped up.
Falco jumped out almost immediately, taking in great gulps of the air and shaking off his stiff joints. He bent down and examined the soil. It was a grayish color, but appeared very rich and moist. Patches of it could be seen through the thick stalks, and between them it took on almost a greenish tone. He craned his neck to see the tops of the stalks and suddenly felt very small among them; they seemed too large, somehow, as if this were a giant planet. Pulling one down, he examined the substance growing on the end. It appeared to be in a shape similar to that of corn, but it was rather a bluish tinge and he wasn't sure he should eat it. He pulled off a kernel anyway and popped it in his beak, ready to crack the hull if need be. But it wasn't hard, and it went down easily with a nice smooth aftertaste reminiscent of cucumber. He waited a few seconds, ready to wash out his mouth with his canteen of stagnant water or something equally as dramatic. No. No burning on the tongue, no sudden dissolution of his stomach...and boy, was it good. He decided to grab a whole ear of the stuff, but the stalk was thick and rubbery. He could not tear it. He pulled at it for all he was worth, the stalk bending lower to the ground, menacingly like a catapult finally it snapped off and Falco fell heavily on his backside. He munched the cool, sweet vegetable and stretched out one more time before climbing back into his Arwing and closing the lid.
He took off and flew fairly low over the countryside. There were fields everywhere. He didn't see any buildings or trees, but he did see what must have been kilometers of the rolling blue-green sea of the corn-like vegetation.
He flew on for only about five minutes before he came to a little pond. The stalks of cucumber-corn towered over it, as tall as trees, and he landed to sniff at the water. He took a sip of it, and it was good beyond description when compared to the warm, old water his canteen was full of. He dumped his canteen out on the ground and filled it with the pond-water after drinking his fill. Then he climbed back into his Arwing and flew around for a few more hours. He caught sight of a beautiful silver river, thin and twisting, but he still saw no signs of civilization. He was still pretty exhausted from his whole black hole ordeal, so he returned to the pond and fell asleep inside his Arwing, which was tightly locked--just in case.
Gerdendrul could not smile; it was not part of Andross's program. But if he could, he would have been. He had been disappointed that his Falco clone had never done anything except lie there by the base. It had never moved or anything. Gerdendrul didn't understand, although Andross might have. But that didn't matter. Katt had awoken, and once he got that straight, he had been able to call to the slug of rock that had embedded in her brain. He liquefied and seeped into the icy dirt, ready to continue his journey subterraneously. There were caves under the surface; remnants of a long-forgotten Fortunese base, and Gerdendrul had been making full use of them. He rolled through the tunnels, coming ever closer to the homely, sopping tent.
It was much too cold in this tent and there was nothing anyone could do. Fox would not sacrifice his dignity, ever, so he was biting his lip to keep from whimpering. Bill was not in such bad shape, but he had a terrible case of the flu and was sitting on the floor so Peppy could have a cot. Blankets were few, and only one went to a critter. Bill was wrapped so tightly in his he couldn't even move. Freezing was a very real danger now that there was no one to build a fire; not a one of them was fit to gather firewood.
Radley McCoy had been by earlier in the day to find everyone in such condition as "gave his old heart a start." He'd gone trilling off into the woods to "help" a few hours earlier. Peppy wanted to stick his tongue out when the badger came back, but he was afraid it would freeze that way.
Falco woke up in his Arwing sometime in the morning to the sight of a beautiful sunrise. The fiery colors he had always seen back home on Corneria were absent, however; Solar was a red star, but apparently the one of this system was blue, or some other icy color. Perhaps it was even white; he had no way of knowing how far from the sun that this planet was, so he couldn't relate the temperature to anything he knew.
He opened the Arwing and climbed out. The morning was crisper than he had expected, and now he regretted the impossibility of having a bit of anything warm to eat the whole day. He sat down, Indian-style, a few meters from the pond. Staring into its depths, which now appeared icy and dark but still somehow welcoming, he wondered to himself if there were any fish in it. He wouldn't eat them, of course; he'd declared vegetarianism sometime during high school, but he still wondered if perhaps he wasn't the only sentient being on the whole planet.
He edged closer to the water and put his beak just a few centimeters from the surface. He didn't see any movement. But there was something down there-- it was covered with dirt, but patches of something glinted in the sun, shining through the dinge and rust. He looked harder, puzzlement making itself known on his face.
Suddenly, his breath caught in his throat as he realized what it was. A great choking sob almost escaped, but he caught himself just in time. Dazed, he stumbled back to his Arwing and tumbled inside.
Of course...how could he have been so blind? He knew this place. He knew that pond. He had been here before, many years ago. Somehow he'd never remembered it before, but now that he was here all the memories came rushing back in torrents. They were good memories, some of the best he'd ever had and better than whatever future probably awaited him; good, but unimaginably strange nonetheless. He could not think clearly. First his freakish experience in the black hole, and now an equally freakish remembrance of times past. He couldn't faint, of course; he'd just woken up from his first full night of sleep in ages and couldn't have gone to sleep to save his life. So he just put his head down on the control panel and didn't move for an hour.
But the hour passed as all things do, and Falco knew he must do something. He couldn't sit there moping until he rotted away.
He climbed back out of his Arwing and tottered back to the pond. It wasn't very deep; maybe one or two meters at its deepest. He plunged a wing into the frigid waters to retrieve the object and pulled it out, the water rolling off his dark blue feathers.
Before he got a chance to really look at it, though, his thoughts were interrupted. Something that felt like the tip of a sword jabbed him in the back.
"On your feet, Master Lombardi," an unpitying voice commanded.
Falco stumbled to his feet and turned around. "Hullo, Rhandon. Isn't this a pleasant surprise."
Rhandon bowed low. "Indeed. Welcome back to Gluncandron. Now, if it pleases you to explain how you got back here?"
"I can't really be sure. I was flying a mission with my team when--"
"Flying? You know as well as anyone that you cannot fly, Falco. What do you mean by this? Have you been hallucinating again....?"
Falco blushed deeply. "I didn't mean that.."
"Prithee," Rhandon said politely, "what did you mean, then?"
"I flew in that." He indicated the somewhat unimpressive Arwing by way of vague gestures.
Rhandon, a rather imperious sort of goat, glanced at his sheep compatriots. "He's been out in the sun too long," he muttered.
"He was no bargain in the shade," A sheep tittered.
Rhandon ignored that. "We'd best get him back to the House."
"I should think you'd be more courteous than this," Falco remarked, irked. "I didn't lie about the Arwing. I know it looks strange, but it flies."
A sheep, it seemed, had just found the Arwing's fuel tank. "My LORD!" He yelped. "The junk heap is full of some evil-smelling liquid!"
Rhandon sniffed the air. "It's petrol. Well, then, Master Falco, it seems you've been having fun in the melotin fields, but now 'tis time to venture indoors. Let us away to the House."
"Yes, let's!" squealed a couple of sheep.
Afterwards, Falco never thought it peculiar that Rhandon and the sheep hadn't asked any more about his team. For some reason they just didn't seem to care; and at the moment, neither did he.
General Pepper presided over another meeting. "What's going on this time?"
"You see, General, sir, we've not heard from Star Fox for over two weeks, and, you see, General, sir, they should, quite frankly, General, sir, be back by now, if you take my meaning. General. Sir." Shalwast hated it when the other officers made him deliver all the news.
"Yes, I'd thought of that myself..." Pepper said slowly.
You had not, Shalwast thought disrespectfully. But no one else seemed to care.
"He's psychic!!"
"Oh, what does he need us for...."
"It's a good thing he's the leader of this army!"
"But anyway, sir, I...we.... Us...I mean these guys.... And me.... That is.....Well, they're in trouble.... At least, that's what we thought. I mean I thought. Or you thought. Uhhh....."
Pepper pondered over this. "Shalwast, I want you to send out an experienced squadron of Cornerian fighters to Fortuna to see if Star Fox needs any help. Make it the Light-Bearers."
"Yes...yessir. General. Sir." Shalwast nearly knocked over his chair when he got up and backed out of the room, bowing.
Pepper rolled his eyes.
Falco sheathed the long-handled sword he had found in the pond and followed the sheep and goat for a good three hours before they finally came to a rolling dirt-covered hill that rose out of the Gluncandran vegetation. Rhandon parted the stalks of two melotin plants and revealed a low doorway chiseled into the earth. Graciously indicating the threshold, he stepped aside and let Falco pass.
It was almost stranger than the black hole in hindsight. He knew he had been here before, after his wings were crippled when he was a child. But how did one get to a world like this (not to mention the getting off of a world like this) and then, years later, somehow come back and realize that one had not had any memories of it until one was there again? And all of it was like something you felt you had read somewhere in a storybook when you were very young. Or even perhaps not so young, but something that had happened in centuries past if it had ever happened at all. Whatever the cause and its nature, it was odder Mayhaps. Than the entire black hole experience, because in the black hole he had known he was experiencing something in more dimensions than three were. Here it was so like what he knew and yet so different that if he had not fallen back into it so easily, the shock might have killed him.
Falco strode down the corridor but stopped a few meters down, not knowing exactly where he was supposed to go. "Second door on the right," murmured a lamb, which had suddenly appeared in one of the doorways. Falco nodded and ducked into the appropriate opening.
"Is it so? ...Once more thou art returning?" a voice spoke out of the darkness. Falco knew it well.
"It is," said Falco with a graceful bow.
"Hast thou found what thine heart desired?" the great eagle, Aravit, inquired.
"I... don't know," answered the bird, confused. Had he? He couldn't remember all of a sudden.
"Shalt thou stay with us this time, or depart again as once before?"
"If it is in my power, lord," responded Falco, kneeling, "I will not leave again."
Chapter 7
I Believe You
I believe you warm,
I believe you'll stay
I believe you cold
I believe you'll stray
I believe you
What else can I do?
"Guys? Hello, guys? Where are you? If you don't say something I'm leaving without you!" A voice called from the frozen woods.
No one answered.
A bird that looked exactly like Falco came closer. "Hello?" Then he spotted the tent and pulled aside the flap. "Guys? Are you okay?"
Katt woke up from all his shouting. "Who's there?"
Falco folded his wings behind his back. "It's me."
She looked over at him in the entryway. "You're alive! Is it really you?"
"Gee, you know, I think it's really me. But then, I can't really be sure. Why, just last time I checked to see if I was really me, well, what do you know, it turns out someone else was me," he commented sardonically.
Katt was too happy to much care. "What happened to you? Why didn't you come back sooner?"
"I don't really know what happened," the clone said truthfully. "The last thing I remember is falling asleep on my way to Fortuna. Then I woke up on the ground by the remains of Ice Eye a few hours ago. I can't imagine what happened; my Arwing is nowhere around and it didn't look like I had crashed. Anyway, why am I telling you all this? Where's Fox?.....Oh." He spotted the sleeping lump in the corner.
"You've been gone for more than two weeks! It couldn't have taken that long.... I wonder what happened to you. Well, who cares! You're back now, and that's what matters, right?"
"Yeah, I guess," Falco said quietly. "Why is everyone asleep?"
"They're sick. I am, too." She shivered. "It's freezing cold in here. If we can't get a fire built, I'm afraid all of us are going to freeze."
"Don't worry, I'll go get some wood," Falco promised, and then danced off into the forest. Katt nearly wept with joy and wanted to shriek and wake everyone up, but she didn't because she didn't really have enough energy to repeat the story.
Gerdendrul's Falco clone fed on the real Falco's life force. The real Falco would not feel any energy depletion; however he felt physically was the way the clone would feel. That was why the clone had not "come to life" until the real Falco was out of the black hole. But the real problem was that the clone did not know he was a clone. And any clone that fancies that he is the real fajita can present many problems after a while.
"Are you ready to go, sir?" Ferdinand Shalwast queried.
"Ohhhh, woe is me!" Shrieked the sparrow. "We'll go, but we'll probably never come back!"
"Oh, good merciful heavens," Shalwast muttered under his breath.
The sparrow looked piercingly at the mockingbird. She was at least half a meter shorter than Shalwast and seemed to practice her melodramatic, suicidal look. In fact, she did. Her name was Helen Jeritrali, and everyone who wasn't scared silly that she was really going to kill herself thought she was completely ridiculous.
"Ms. Jeritrali," Shalwast said finally. "Are you going, or were you planning on standing here on the launch pad all day?"
Helen's beak cracked into a morbid grin. She turned to her teammates. "The bird doesn't care about us," she said bemoaningly. "It's time for us to go." She threw a wing over her eyes for dramatic effect and climbed blindly into her jet, until she hit her head on the canopy and uncovered her face, cursing inaudibly.
A mouse that worked in computer repair had named Helen's team, the Light-Bearers. The team consisted of two rabbits, a tree frog, a capybara, a wombat, and Helen herself.
Their jets, which the tree frog (her name was Sherry) had painted purple, took off quickly and fluttered about aimlessly, barrel rolling and twisting every which way before they finally cleared the atmosphere. Shalwast wondered about General Pepper's choice of which team to send.
Falco returned to the tent thirty minutes later, his wings loaded with firewood. He dropped it all on the floor without even an effort to be quiet. Bill and Fox woke up.
"Falco!" Gaped Fox.
"No, it's not really Falco. This is Zort, Falco's evil twin."
"Really?" Fox's mind was still muddled from sleep.
"No, not really." Falco resisted the urge to maximize this opportunity.
Bill blinked several times. "Hey, man, you're back!"
"Yeah. I still don't know what happened, though."
Suddenly, Radley McCoy appeared in the doorway carrying a bottle of wine. "Who are you? Another one of these crazy kids, I'll wager," he said to Falco. Falco eyed the badger piercingly but said nothing. Radley was oblivious. "I couldn't find anything useful out in the woods--this is an ice chunk, after all--but I figured some spirits might cheer everyone up."
Bill smashed his pillow against his face. "No more wine, please!"
Fox had never been a part of Radley, Slippy and Bill's drinking parties. "I'll have some of that."
Peppy woke up then, still groggy. "No you won't! No drinking in this tent! Ever!" And just for the heck of it he stuck his tongue out at Radley McCoy.
It froze that way.
The Light-Bearers were edging ever closer to Fortuna, but they still had about twenty minutes to go before they got into the atmosphere. Sherry buzzed Helen on her comlink. "Helen, will you promise me something?"
Helen threw her head back. "Anything, as long as it hurts."
Sherry's eyes narrowed with concern. "Promise you won't frighten the poor Star Fox boys out of their wits? Corneria needs them, you know."
The sparrow pondered it. "I'll do my best," she said finally. "Although, it probably won't be good enough."
Fred, the capybara, wanted in on the fun. "Hey, Helen, do that thing where you look really despairing. You know, where you get that tear in your eye and put your wing on your face like you're about to faint away."
Helen obliged gladly. She'd never felt suicidal in her life, but she didn't know anything more fun than pretending at it. Fred applauded her performance, but Sherry wasn't sure it was healthy. Melody, Tiffany, and Sam all grinned widely and flew spastically around, as was their fashion.
"Aravit has a mission for you," Freeble the sheep informed Falco. The bird was sitting outside the House, still feeling nostalgic from the last time he'd been here.
"Wonderful. What is it?"
"It's just to prove your worth. It's been a long time you know. He wants to make sure you can still pull your weight."
"He won't be disappointed. Now tell me what it is."
"You and Rhandon are supposed to go to the temple on the other side of the Quilawine and take the relic of Hervunlian! That's in the Fulormese territory, you know. They won't take kindly to it. This is not going to be an easy mission."
"Why must I take Rhandon? Isn't he already 'proven?'"
"It would be cruel to send you alone," Freeble shrugged, then turned and walked silently away.
Falco hopped up and walked inside the House to Aravit's chamber. "When am I to depart?"
"Thou will leave at dawn in a half-fortnight. But leave now, there shall be a council in the evening and thou shall find out what thee may need to know then."
That was rather rude, Falco thought grumpily, tromping down the hallway again. He almost bumped into Rhandon. "Oh, there you are."
"Yes. Do you have something to say?"
"Why does Aravit use thee's and thou's and all that?"
Rhandon shrugged. "That is his fashion. Do not all eagles do this?"
"Not in Lylat."
Rhandon did not ask what Lylat was before he moved on. Again, Falco did not wonder why he hadn't. And again, he did not care.
Falco was busy heating some water for Peppy's tongue. The miserable hare was still wrapped in a blanket with his tongue out in the direction Radley McCoy had been in before he moved. Every two minutes or so Falco would still look in Peppy's direction and laugh.
Falco's merriment awakened Slippy not too soon after. Now everyone was awake, and gladly they were alive (Peppy had worried that falling asleep in this cold might prove fatal). Falco'd had to endure scores of questions from everyone, almost none of which he could answer.
No one questioned his authenticity. Why should they?
Gerdendrul ran into some problems in the catacombs. A broken support in one of the cave walls had caused almost the whole tunnel to collapse, and now the way to the animals' camp was blocked off. It wasn't much good being able to ooze around the debris if he couldn't see where he was going. So he had to turn around and go back up the tunnels, and since he couldn't seep straight through the surface this time (gravity was against him, you know), he was forced to search the tunnels until he found the one that led to the surface. This little romp had led him kilometers away from where he knew the camp to be. So even that is not enough to discourage a Venomian bio-weapon.
He had returned to the site of Ice Eye and discovered that his clone had come to life. And now came the fun. The signals from Katt and the clone would be quite enough to lead him straight to the camp with no turnarounds.
Now he was aiming for speed rather than stealth. Gerdendrul did not control the Falco clone, but it was basically made out of another part of him, and it had another piece that was controlled by Gerdendrul implanted in its brain, like Katt. Sometimes it wondered if it oughtn't to make a Katt clone, since he had been busy with one when that fool of a badger had scattered him the first time. But no; a Katt clone would only make them suspicious, because it wouldn't have ended up being a very good one: He only had what his slug told him of her persona, but no personal artifacts such as a piece of fur. It was a rotten deal for him. But ANYWAY, as long as they weren't expecting him, he didn't really need to be as stealthy as he had been trying to before.
There it was...the tent, less than 40 meters away. Gerdendrul liquefied and rushed onward, a horrific torrent that splashed around and enveloped trees, rocks, and anything else it came into contact with. It rushed around the outside of the tent and poured inside.
"NOOOO!!!" Katt screeched as the gritty slime enveloped her again, just like in her nightmare and just like what had happened on her first encounter with the bio-weapon. She fainted and was of course no help at all in the ensuing battle.
Falco (or rather, Falco's psychic essence) had, of course, never seen the bio-weapon, and now he jumped back against the back of the tent with the stone lapping around his ankles.
The blasters had all been lying on the floor by the doorway, and now the only sign that they were still there was a slight interruption in the flow of rock. Slippy, Bill, and Fox had found some strength they didn't know they had. (Or were pretending they didn't have so everyone would still wait on them) And were using it to jump up and down like mad children at play on the top of their cots to avoid coming into contact with the bio-weapon. Peppy was miserably trying to ward off the bio-weapon with his little shield of a cot, trying to ignore the pain in his frozen tongue.
Radley had lopped off a bulge of rock with an umbrella that had suddenly seemed to appear in his paw, and he jumped over it and dashed outside, where he continued to whack at the rock with it. Peppy viewed this with disgust. The others had no opinion; they were scared out of their minds.
Falco dove straight into the swell and groped around for a blaster. The shortened stub of rock that Radley had temporarily taken care of was back now, full force, and it slammed him back down when he tried to get up. The rest of the rock covered him and he couldn't breathe. He found the blaster and fired one shot before something very curious happened.
Apparently, the reaction between liquid stone and the solid, psychically implanted stone of a clone causes both to liquefy and merge. Falco was no more.
"Scanning! Scanning! We need some better planning!" Chanted Melody and Tiffany together. The Light-Bearers had been scanning for signs of life for at least five minutes now with no luck.
"We'll be too late!" Shrieked Helen. "They'll die and it will be all my fault!"
Fred suddenly noticed something on his radar and tried to jump up and down with joy. He only succeeded in hitting his head on the canopy of his jet. "I found them, I found them!"
Sherry twirled insanely around in her purple jet. "Well, let's go!"
Sam the wombat did slow turns in his jet and then somersaulted a couple of times, narrowly missing a tree. He grinned, admiring his own skill. Then he ran into the tent.
Suddenly, Star Fox and Gerdendrul were out in the open. Sam flew wildly around, trying to get the tent off his jet's nose so he would be able to see. Because there were no longer any walls to pile up against, Gerdendrul bubbled and oozed back to the center, too shocked to make sure he stayed where he was. Coughing and choking, Katt tumbled off her cot.
Radley McCoy yodeled and subdued another chunk of bio-weapon with a hearty thwack of his umbrella. "All right, you crazy youngsters, keep clear!"
Peppy, afraid of what he might do, urged all the others to comply. He fell off his own cot and stumbled as far away from where the tent had formerly been as he could. Fox bumbled around and grabbed Slippy by a foot, dragging the luckless toad over rocks and tree branches. Bill seemed to be in no hurry. Shrieking and crying, Katt fell several times on her way to a nearby tree.
Radley pulled a plastic explosive out of a pouch hanging at his side and planted it in the bio-weapon like a birthday candle. He struck a match against a tree, and, jumping and yelling lit the explosive and hopped away like a drunken rabbit.
Suddenly, the others realized that they didn't see Falco anymore. "Falco! Where's Falco?? No, he's still there! You'll kill him! NOO!!!" Katt screeched.
Helen flew in and fired a few shots at the bio-weapon. This caused the explosive to detonate, and it seemed to pack more of a punch than it looked like it should. Pieces of the bio-weapon struck Fox and Bill in their faces, but most of it flew out of sight. Katt stood there staring at the scorched earth for three seconds. Then she crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
Chapter 8
Goin' down
And now I see the life I led,
I slept it all away in bed.....
"Are you ready to go?" Melody and Tiffany chirped in unison. The bio-weapon was no longer a threat, at least not for an hour or so, and the Light-Bearers wanted to round everyone up and get them off the planet while they still could.
The entire Star Fox team plus Bill was staring in shock at the crater where Falco had been. They didn't know it had been a clone.
Radley McCoy came strolling back over; oblivious to the looks everyone was giving him. Slippy's mouth was hanging open. Finally, the toad got the energy to speak.
"You killed him!!" He yelped shrilly. "You killed Falco!"
"Kill? Kill? I didn't kill anybody," said Radley, with one of his oh-you-crazy-kids looks.
Fox was definitely very angry. "You didn't happen to notice that along with the bio-weapon, YOU BLEW UP FALCO??!!"
"Ahh, you mean him! I thought he smelled funny. No, that wasn't anyone who came here with you kids. Smelled very much like granite. It was a clone, or something, so don't you worry your unattractive little head, boy. Whatever it was it was made o' the same stuff that dog you were just fighting was."
Suddenly everybody felt much better; everyone except Katt, who was still lying in a heap on the ground.
"If your friend had been killed," Helen said darkly, "I would have taken full responsibility."
Sam's jet, still covered with tent, landed awkwardly next to everyone. "Hey, let's make like a bone-chisel and split, okay? I'm picking up some seriously uncouth vibes."
Bill snuffled, still getting over the flu, and looked at Radley. "Well, if that wasn't Falco, then where is Falco?"
"Oh, I don't know," Radley said dismissively. "I expect he'll come back sometime. Now you kids better leave while you still have the chance. I'll see you sometime, maybe. Or maybe not. But if you're still hanging around with these bad influences, I hope we don't meet again! G'bye!" Radley waved heartily and disappeared into the woods without another word.
"The jets have storage compartments," said Fred joyously. "They're really big jets, don't you think? A passenger can fit very comfortably in there," he continued.
Sherry started pushing the Star Fox team in the direction of the jets. "Come on, guys, right in there. Get in there." The team, which was still by no means well, climbed stiffly into the jets. Sam romped over to Katt and dragged her into a jet by a paw.
"The Arwings," Fox said suddenly. "What'll happen to them?"
"We'll send someone down for them later," Helen said. "If we ever get around to it. Which we might not. We'll have them get us some pretzels, too."
The Light-Bearers crawled into their jets, closed everything up, and took off. The Star Fox team left Fortuna behind in the blink of an eye, but unfortunately the memories of that hellish time did not depart as quickly or as easily.
Falco sighed and tried to listen to what Aravit was saying, but all the thys and thous and thees were becoming a little too much for him. He settled down, trying to muck through the strange language but all the time clinging to a hope that Rhandon would tell him what he had missed if he never did get it figured out.
Apparently the gist of it was that he and Rhandon were supposed to go romping around the Gluncandran scenery until they came to Fulormene, where they would most likely find large groups of people who did not like them. Then they would find a really big building and go inside, searching through it until they found a little statue of a cat. Then they would make their way through crowds of really angry people and have a nice stroll back to the House. Really neat, Falco thought to himself.
When the council was over, Falco went to the little room he called his own and sat down on what passed for a bed. Trying to sort out the details of this journey while also trying to sort through all the weird memories he was getting was not an easy task, and he eventually gave up on it and got up. Crossing to the window, he stared out it and looked up at the endless expanse of stars. The waving, fluid motions of the melotin seemed to Falco like a dance, and under the strangely bright sky the plants looked like a vast, dark sea. He decided he would have to get everything worked out eventually, so he thought it best to start at the beginning. It was hard to try and think about Arwings, or Fox, or even Lylat for that matter, at least while he was here on Gluncandron. He had to really work at it to keep on track.
This wasn't the first time he'd been stupid enough to fly into a black hole. The chances of actually finding a black hole were one in a million, less than that of being struck by lightning. I guess I'm just lucky. Or stupid. Take your pick, Falco thought in his usual cheerful manner. Fox claimed to have found two in Lylat, and said they were little shortcuts, like Meteo to Katina, or some rot like that. Those weren't black holes, though, not really; they were wormholes, and they were little more than passageways. Some went a long way, others didn't. But out of everyone in the Star Fox team; only Falco had really ever been into a black hole. The others had seen it and pulled back the first time. Falco had seen it too, but for some reason he didn't try to steer away from it; he saw something in it that so transfixed him that he didn't even think to try not to fly into it. It was reminiscent of tornado victims who become so fascinated by the tornado that they forget to get away from it. Of course, last time he hadn't gotten a bay door open while he was in it. But the point was that a black hole--a real black hole--didn't take you to another planet in the same system or to a planet a few systems down. You couldn't just fly back from where a black hole took you, because it was like another universe; and now that he thought about it he could remember things. Some he could describe in words, but most he couldn't. Gluncandron was one of the things he remembered that, odd enough as it was, was more commonplace.
Don't think too much, he reprimanded himself. You shouldn't think too hard or you'll never be able to enjoy nice normal things ever again. He knew this from experience. Once he had read a very profound book, and afterwards he had sat up all night having very deep thoughts. The one problem with that was that he had found it very hard afterwards to think about many things in the same light, and he had done his best to forget everything he'd read in that book so he could lead a normal life again. Normal, he scoffed at himself. HA!
It seemed that Fox and his pals were making yet another trip to the hospital.
Gloria Stevens checked in the whole chuffing team plus Bill and Katt, chatting with the Light-Bearers as she did so. "So, got in a little trouble, haven't they? I thought the Star Fox team could handle Invaders," she said in conversational tones.
"There weren't any invaders," said Fred, confused. "I think he lived there."
"Oh, it's too bad Falco's not here. I wanted to tell him that his pine marten friend is recovering quite nicely. Where is he, anyway?"
Melody and Tiffany did not speak immediately. They were trying to come up with a rhyme for Falco so they could chant annoyingly all afternoon.
"Maybe he was in the tent," Sam said casually.
"Oh, is that the one they said died?" Sherry commented sweetly.
"Died?" Gloria gaped.
"Oh, but that cheery fellow said he was really a bio-weapon," Fred murmured.
"It would be just our luck if he really had died," Helen yelped.
"Balco.... Calco...dalco.... E-alco.... Fal--Nevermind, galco...halco...ialco...jalco..." Tiffany and Melody racked their brains.
"See you later, Miss Stevens!" Sam waved merrily as the Light-Bearers hopped energetically back to their jets (except for Helen, who slouched and dragged her feet).
A little while later, two doctors arrived to inspect the injuries. Dr. Rose Carter, a lemur, examined and dressed Katt's wound. The other doctor, Frank, came over shortly. "What do you think, doctor?"
"It's really icky," Rose stuck out her tongue. "It looks like she was shot or something. That bleedin' hare didn't look at it or anything, and we found monumental amounts of sedatives in the entire bloody team's systems! Take away that rabbit's medical license," she said angrily.
"He doesn't have a medical license."
"Then give him one so you can take it away! I can't believe that flippin' bunny did this. What a schlemiel."
"He was doing his best, doctor. Anyway, it looks like they've all got the Grangese fever (they may have contracted it from old medical supplies) and are suffering from extreme cold. The dog (Bill, did they say it was?) appears not to have the Fever, but he looks like he's got a bad case of influenza. The fox (he's famous, right? I think I've seen him in the paper)...well, anyway, he has a sprained leg, a broken ankle, and a broken rib. We'll have to operate on the ankle, but the other injuries should heal in a couple weeks or so. We'll have to keep all of them in the hospital until they've recovered, since it looks like they won't have anyone to take care of them when they go home."
"Ja, okay." Rose slapped a Band-Aid on Katt's leg and pranced out of the room, followed by Frank.