Starfox Chronicles: Prologue 2 - Memoir

Starfox Chronicles: Prologue 2 - Memoir

Andross Oinkenny

Prologue II
Memoir


“Venom is a harsh frontier world on the periphery of the Lylat System… the atmosphere itself is a noxious concoction of Nitrogen, Carbon Dioxide and Chlorine gas, the latter of which gives the planet’s atmosphere it’s distinctive green haze. There is little Oxygen to speak of, which makes the planet’s atmosphere practically unbreathable and toxic to anyone on the surface for an extended period of time.

There is no water to speak of, thus no life exists on the planet. Also, there is almost no tilt to the planet’s rotation so there are no seasons and very little weather. This is rather fortunate, as any weather on this already hostile planet would make existence on it nearly impossible. Instead, the climate is little more than a cold green fog that exists about 20 meters above equilibrium. (I would call it sea-level, but since there is no water, that is a futile effort so height is judged by the surface level if the planet itself were completely smooth given its mass.)

The planet itself is also a bit larger than Corneria, giving it a gravity of about one and a half times that of Corneria. It isn’t much but it is enough to impede travel and equipment operation. Additionally, the rocky surface of the planet is broken by cliffs, chasms and great mountain ranges making it difficult to traverse by any means on land. This, combined with its atmospheric composition and its distance from Corneria, makes exploration of any depth practically impossible…”

Of course… this is all very fortunate for me. You see if the military itself had put more time and effort into exploring the planet, they might have stumbled across what I have…

It wasn’t very far from the base camp so graciously provided for me by the Cornerian Military, after all…

You see, I needed personal privacy every once in a while for my own personal thoughts. So every once in a while I would use one of the computers in the lab and hack into the security mainframe, using the delay in transmission to run a loop of me sitting at that computer indefinitely or for whatever period of time I required to accomplish my task. Repeating this for the other cameras in the base, I was eventually left free to do as I pleased and would often take a pleasant stroll on the surface of the planet itself. The planet itself is quite treacherous, but since there are no native life forms to worry about, nor any random weather anomalies, I fared quite well on the surface during my outings.

It was on one of these outings that my dreams were finally realized!

You see, at one time Venom was an apparently inhabited planet. There are many ruins dotting the surface, ranging from single buildings to large city sized areas of ruins. Well, nearby my little internment camp (that’s what they call this prison without bars) was a rather large structure, resembling a massive tomb or palace of some sort. The hallways and chambers are massive in themselves with carved stone statues seventy meters high, as if giants walked through these halls, working their way several kilometers deep into the mountain in which the structure is imbedded.

The farther down I went, the stranger it got. Instead of walls made of stone, I found corridors of metal with glowing crystals and strange organic light fixtures resembling large tubes of glowing green and blue gelatin. Eventually, I came upon a large shaft. The opening was a twenty meter or so wide gaping hole in the ground, the bottom an indeterminable distance down from the mouth of the well itself as it was completely enshrouded in darkness after a certain depth, the lights on my suit useless at such an immense distance. But regardless, I needed to know what was down there. So using my hydrogen powered jetpack I slowly began my decent down into the abyss.

This is where I made my miscalculation. You see, in reality I had no idea of the length of the shaft itself, but I was confident that I would have enough power in my jetpack to get down to the bottom. Well after about fifteen minutes or so of slow decent I could no longer see the top, nor see the bottom, darkness completely enshrouding me. It was at this time I heard the indicator on my pack begin to beep. You see, the indicators on the jetpack itself have three very distinct beeps. There is a high pitched one for overheating, a very low pitched one for malfunction, and three beeps in rapid succession for low fuel… well, this particular beep was the latter and I became very worried. I thought I had taken this into consideration when I checked my gauge at the beginning of the jump. It read three-fourths full, which would have left me enough for another fifty minutes, more than enough for me to travel a bit more and then make my way back up in case I didn’t find anything. I became increasingly worried that my gauge was faulty and that I was almost out of fuel and after five minutes or so my fears were confirmed as my jetpack sputtered out and my body went into a terminal freefall the likes of which I have never experienced.

Now there are points in our lives in which we consider the idea of our own mortality. This is one of two such events that I have experienced in my life. The first of which, was the occasion when I was paraded in front of the Cornerian Military Council for sentencing after my ill-fated attempt to use my biotech experiment, Cassius, to remove that puppet, President Iwata from office in my own special manner. This second time would be very different however, for instead of resulting in my exile and imprisonment, it would spark a new age of freedom I could only dream of.

I fell through the darkness for what seemed like an eternity, the flicker of neon blue and green passing me in the abyss striking awe and wonder into my heart as the feeling of impending doom washed away in the dark. I’m not sure if I was even awake at the time, but my body slowly began to decelerate and eventually stopped in midair.

Floating in the darkness, I felt a warmth on my face, a comforting and gentle warmth that erased my worries… I slowly opened my eyes and I was rewarded with a most magnificent sight…

I realized where I was, I had seen it all before! I had seen the plans myself but they were only theory, modern science had deemed such a creation an impossibility! Suddenly I understood what was happening…

Before me stood a large column of blue light, silver bolts of electricity arcing along hair thin wires leading from the parent nodes into the planet itself. White beads of pure energy pulsing along the shaft of light from node to node in a regular rhythm like the beating of a giant heart… an analogy which is almost quite true. What I saw before me was a Geomagnetic Generator. A massive power plant that used the rotation of the planet itself and the composition of the crust around the generator to create a giant magnetic field the exact opposite of the planet’s, creating a massive stream of electricity that thrummed with the very pulse of the planet itself.

This is what I had been looking for! A sufficient power source was all I needed to complete my final experiment, a device that would change not only Corneria, not only the Lylat System, but the entire universe itself! The Telekinetic Psychic Energy Amplifier Core… or the Telecube, as I liked to call it, a device that could change a mere thought into reality, give a man the power to rearrange continents, move planets and collapse stars at their very cores! I knew very well that that is what the military was waiting on. They wanted the Telecube, but now I had the power to make it all happen and happen the way I wanted it to…

I won’t bore you with the details on how I managed to return to the base; all you need to know is that I sit here now, a different man. My mind is full of new thoughts and new ideas. New blood courses through my veins and I have once again been filled with a young man’s ambition. Not only that, but I have a new goal as well… to get what is mine, and what is mine, is revenge. I shall have my revenge on the Lylat system and all who stand in my way…

Unfortunately the Telecube still needs to be refined, but for now it suits me… I have all the power I need to destroy my enemies. With the base in disarray and contact cut off, they will come for me soon, but that is fine with me… after all, I am greatly limited on what material I have for my experiments and such a delivery would be greatly appreciated…