Inheritance (Metroid)

[Cuofeng]

Inheritance
...
Chapter 1: Sulphur and Ice
...​

An acidic wind gently blew through Samus' short blond hair. The crumbled hill she sat on was nothing special, just a slight five meter rise that gave way before her into a gradual dusty tumble of dull black rocks and reddish sand. Above her, yellow clouds drifted in the light of a cold red sun. The valley beyond was more of the same, broken rocks and sandy lifeless gullies. It wasn't much of a view, but it was there and it was hers to see. There were mountains in the distance.

The thin layer of ice forming on her eyes began to obscure her vision and she blinked it away again. Her helmet sat upside down between some rocks at her feet but she left it there even though she still wore the rest of her armored power suit. The cold stung a little more these days since the metroid DNA infusion but that couldn't be helped. Every once and a while she needed to feel the wind, even if it was only on her head. It had been almost two years since she'd gotten the chance. And besides, the faint tickle of acidic vapors in her lungs felt a little like home. Distantly, she considered smiling.

The footsteps behind her were getting closer. The spinal interface in her suit fed more precise signals; four bipedal individuals of around the same size, two much heavier with intense energy signatures. So power armor, but just on two of them. It looked like they were being polite. Samus leaned back slightly, her armored exterior plates clinking against a bit of jagged volcanic rock.

Now the newcomers were within five meters of her and they stopped at the base of the little hill. Their boots crunched against the bits of gravel on the basalt ground. One set of boots, not either of the power armors', stepped forward.

"Samus Aran."

The voice came out both though an exterior speaker and over com channels, arriving simultaneously through her ears and from her skull implants. A woman's voice. "We are agents of the Galactic Federation Police. You are under arrest for crimes relating to the destruction of Research Station SR388. We are here to transport you the fleet ship Diomedes for your preliminary hearing."

Samus took in one last deep breath and let it out slowly. The white fog of ice crystals gradually turned yellow as it reacted with the sulfurous air. Then she grabbed her helmet in her left hand and stood up. One more blink to clear the ice on her eyes and she turned.

Four humans in varying degrees of armor were waiting at the bottom of her low outcropping, standing in front of Samus's own yellow gunship. Their much larger black and silver GFP transport loomed in the near distance, squatting like a huge bird on uncertain ground. Samus didn't need her visor to know that both those soldiers in power armor were focusing all their targeting on the gun that encased her right forearm. After all, it was currently the most powerful weapon on this planet, and that included the main canons of that ship they flew in on. She would expect nothing less of good soldiers.

"Please deactivate your weapons and come with us." The woman spoke again. Unlike the blank helmets of the power suits, Samus could see her face. She and her unarmored fellow were dressed in thin, heat controlled pressure suits and transparent oxygen masks, just a fabric-like layer of enhanced polymers between them and the planet's air. That might be why she was trembling as Samus walked down the hill, growing nearer with each step.

Samus stopped beside the woman and looked down at her. The woman glanced up, her lips slightly apart behind her faceplate as she tried to think of how to precisely deal with this very irregular arrest. Samus noticed a few strands of straight black hair hanging down near the soldier's ear, motionless even as a new gust once again brushed sulfur through Samus' own hair. In their suits, none of them could feel the wind.

That was a necessary sacrifice. Humans couldn't survive in this atmosphere.

"Er, yes," the woman said, glancing back at her teammate and the other two in power armor. "Thank you for your cooperation. Um..." Here she tapped at the neck of her suit and switched to an encrypted comm channel for her team. "Did she actually deactivate her weapons?"

Samus heard that just as easily, fed straight from the suit systems to her ear nerves. She also heard the slightly nervous response from the righthand armored soldier.

"How should we know? That thing she's wearing is a black box on every scan. The only way I even know she's organic is that she's got her flipping head sticking out. They weren't kidding about her by the way, in this environment? Not baseline indeed."

The woman made a slight flick of her fingers at the soldier before she tapped her neck again and nervously smiled up at Samus. "Ms Aran? I'm Officer Yin. This is Perez and our escorts Park and Nigam. We have a seat ready for you on our transport back to the Federation ship Diomedes." Oddly courteous for an arrest, but then again Samus' status had always been a bit odd within the Federation. Well, 'odd' if that word could fluctuate between 'asset' and 'liability' at a frequency approaching microwaves. She wondered how Yin had been chosen to come retrieve her.

Samus started walking past them. There was a brief flurry of the skritching sounds of boots on gravel as the GF party scrambled to maintain the appearance of custody. Then, as they passed Samus' ship, she stopped again and Yin almost walked into her armored back. Samus turned to the officers and said:

"My ship."

Officer Yin recovered quickly enough from hearing Samus' voice for the first time. "Oh. Yes. Well, if you'll cede navigation controls, our transport's computer can plot an automated guide up to a holding berth on Diomedes. For the duration of your-"

Yin was interrupted by Samus casually banging her arm-gun twice on the nose of her ship and the subsequent roar of igniting thrusters. A wave of dust burst through the party as the yellow hunter-ship began to rise up into the air before reconfiguring to blast off at a steep ascent. It quickly vanished into the cloudy yellow sky.

Samus heard Perez tap his comm controls. "Uh, Diomedes, looks like you've got an impound incoming. It'll be there...whenever it decides to show up, I guess."

One smooth motion of Samus' left arm and her helmet clicked into place over her head. Her vision was instantly once more filled with all the flurry of information she was used to considering part of her. Her senses were back up to fifteen and she wore a slight smirk as she noticed the soldier's weapons twitch up yet again in reaction to even that innocuous gesture. Perez took an unconscious quarter step back and Yin looked like she wanted to. All from putting on a helmet. They couldn't help it; there were enough stories surrounding that image of the Bounty Hunter, fully clad.

Samus didn't have time to deal with that and started walking once more in the direction of the GF transport, slightly faster this time. If they wanted to keep arresting her then they would have to keep up.

It took a second but they did so. The armored soldiers adjusted easily enough though Samus was quietly impressed that Yin and Perez managed to keep pace as well as they did. Over one-and-a-half times terran evolved gravity was nothing to ignore, especially for someone like Yin for whom a glance suggested that her slight frame was from a spacer adapted gene pool. Without any conscious thought, Samus' suit began scanning them as age, equipment, and past medical procedures began to flash across her eyes.

As they neared the transport ship, Samus noticed that Yin was glancing up at Samus even as she herself was looking down at the officer. Perez was keeping his distance while Park and Nigam were mostly concerned with maintaining firing lines focused on her back. But Yin was looking at her, curious inspection in her eyes and something that might have been...disappointment?

After a moment Yin was forced to respond to Samus' persistent matching stare. Those eyes were the only human part of her visible now, and even they were obscured and tinted green by the helmet's visor. Trying to match that gaze only led to Yin almost tripping flat on her face when she realized that she didn't have an augmatic suit to automatically walk across uneven ground without looking.

Catching herself, Yin said, "Oof. Um, I'm familiar with the files on you, Ms Aran, at least the ones my clearance gives me access too. It's just that..." She trailed off. They were almost at the Federation transport.

Samus was used to that unease. People on most planets often had a visceral reaction to being near unfamiliar power armor, even if their own forces used it too. And there was an inherent threat about Samus' appearance; it was a suit designed at every level of its being not just for combat or defense, but for war. War in any shape, against any foe, lit by any star in the sky. She was prepared for anything.

Yin started again. "It's just that...I thought you had long hair."

Samus actually froze in the middle of a step as she blinked with surprise just prior to touching the GF transport's ramp. She was usually prepared.

Yin seemed to take this as offense and began to stammer, "Not that it looks bad this way! I actually kind of like it, I mean. Do you have some sort of system in your suit that changes the length for you or...?" She quietly trailed off once more as Perez treated her to an incredulous look.

Samus slowly turned back and stared with pure confusion over these priorities. It was honestly hilarious what strange things people focused on.

"Haircuts. It grows." Samus considered laughing but decided that would probably be too much. So she stepped inside their ship and made her way to the seats mounted the middle of in the fuselage. There was one which bristled with restraints, locks, and a moderate amount of mid grade explosives. She assumed that one was hers.

Truthfully, this time she'd lost her old mid-back tresses in the combination X-Parasite and metroid biological war-zone the GF's own doctors had turned her suit into during her last ordeal. She'd managed to eventually stabilize things but for a while the suit's organic systems had been running haywire and unguarded protein strands had a way of getting dissolved. It was actually quite interesting from a technological perspective, but at the moment she didn't feel the impulse to explain. At least she had her eyebrows back by now.

As a girl, her parents had loved her hair. Both sets of them had.

The GF soldiers locked into their seats on each side of her. Another encrypted comm line flared to life.

"Transport A-3 to Diomedes. Subject in custody and onboard. Lifting off for rendezvous."

The military ship rumbled as the main engines started up. Everything in its secure computer was instantly available for Samus to peruse whether they wanted her to or not, but nothing of interest presented itself. The other armored soldiers were still watching her and officer Perez glanced at her beam gun and the hull once or twice with an expression that had noticed his own outfit was not rated for vacuum exposure. Clearly there was a measure of uncertainty about precisely how much custody Samus was actually under.

However, something other than hairstyles was still bothering Yin, and after a few minutes of fidgeting slightly in her seat she worked up the nerve to voice it.

"There's something I've got to ask you but...well, I know the charges you're facing. And then you're out here at the edge of space." She looked up slightly before turning back in confusion. "You could have hidden forever. Why did we catch you?"

Samus paused, flicking her eyes over at Yin without moving any other part of her body. The smaller woman shuddered for a brief moment but controlled herself.

"You were getting annoying." Then Samus looked forward again, passing the time by reading the easily decrypted memory banks of this transport.

This pursuit had lasted sixteen months, back and forth across the border of Federation space. She hadn't made it easy for them to track her down, sticking mostly to nonhuman worlds, but then again doing her job even in an unlicensed capacity was hardly low profile. People important enough to slapped with bounties tended to leave a stir when they went missing. Enough of a trail for dedicated investigators to follow. Then there was that one capital which had built a statue of her. That was embarrassing, but she didn't have the number tentacles necessary to communicate her wishes in their language.

Destroying the SR388 orbital station had certainly earned the revocation of her Hunter's license but by now, according to her internal calculations, the repeated diversion of GF forces to wherever a glimmer of Samus Aran showed up on the nets had to have nearly reached a cost comparable to a significant fraction of the original loss's value. The upset scientists might bemoan the incalculable value of scientific discovery but their political superiors were well practiced in exactly that calculation. By stalling the issue this long, Samus figured that the bureaucracy would have rolled along and already mostly forgotten its plans with the research station in favor of shifting the funding to whatever replacement was the pet project of the newest rising cadres. Things moved fast in the universe and even with massive property destruction and a bit of treason Samus's record still looked rosy in comparison to many.

But in the end, it was truthfully Samus' curiosity had led to this surrender. She'd done reparation-by-service before as, like it or not, the Federation valued her far more than most of the individuals they considered their subjects. Samus was willing to take the odds on the charges against her if only buy a freedom from this military pursuit in a few years or decades. It was all the same, more or less. It'd long been an accepted fact that she was unlikely to find out what her natural lifespan was these days. Sometimes she wondered if she still had one.

But still there was something tickling the edge of her thought. Some trick from the mind expanding meditation her second family had attempted to teach her. Something was different now. Something added up strangely. And she was going to find out what it was, even if it meant sticking her head in a proverbial noose. She felt herself smile, invisible to all her supposed captors. The risk was familiar as, after all, mortal peril was pretty much her established method of investigation.

They would arrive on the ship Diomedes in twenty minutes. Samus recognized that name. On ancient Earth, it was a warrior who managed to draw blood from a god. It was a good name.

...​

 

[Cuofeng]

...
Chapter 2: Habeas Corpus
...​

Samus stepped down onto the Diomedes hanger deck and very quickly reassessed some assumptions about her "capture". This place was huge. Racks of fighter craft waited along the walls and other armed transports were parked across the floor within the absolute minimum tolerances. At least twenty flight crew were moving around within sight and a full squad of armored marines stood at attention. Samus thought to herself that she might have slightly overestimated the GF's commitment to politeness. Two hulking point-defense bots shifted their metal limbs near the main exit, gun barrels the size of her chest aimed down at each step she took. Yes, they were not happy with her.

Her previous two armored escorts disappeared with obvious relief, passing off their charge to a group with stronger armaments. Yin and Perez might have wished they could do the same, but as the arresting officers they were tied to Samus side for the foreseeable future. Samus watched them shrink back a bit as their path took them between the huge robots, atlas-class anti-aircraft guns tracking the base of their spines. Samus shook her head as inside her helmet her lips curled up at the corner. The show was actually amusing. Apparently she was a prime bounty now. Then to the side she could now just glimpse her yellow gunship in the process of being rather well restrained into a secure docking location. She gave a familiar two fingered wave in the ship's direction as they left the hanger.

The escort stomped down long corridors. Off down a corner Samus saw another hanger in the distance. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. This ship was too big. There was no reason for something this size to be out here at the very fringes of the Federation space. Nothing in this system could justify even powering up the jump drive on this monster. But they had come only for her, and probably not just to seek justice against her. She was missing something from this cost calculation.

"Right in here," Officer Yin said, gesturing to an open door leading to a clean white room. "You'll be processed inside. Officer Perez and I will be waiting at the exit when you're done."

Samus stepped inside, armored shoulders just barely coming fitting through the width of the doorway. These bulkheads were extraordinarily thick, composed of sturdy, energy absorbing alloys. Sensible precautions, really, if woefully insufficient in this particular case.

The door closed behind her and Samus stood in the middle of the room, an orange and red metal goliath surrounded on every side by seamless white.

"Disable all armaments and exit from your armor." A voice came out of a few artfully concealed speakers. The voice was calm yet firm, any menace dulled by long repetition. Yet underneath it all was a trill of fear. Their sensors would be throwing up only pure confusion as they attempted to scan the Chozo technology.

"Your equipment will be released to you upon your acquittal or completion of your sentence. If you require assistance to remove the armor, automated systems will be made available." Translation: Get out or we'll cut you out.

She had no reason to keep them waiting. Samus reached up with her left hand and grabbed her helmet. It slipped off without resistance, instantly releasing at her will. She tapped it against her thigh and it hung there easily with an invisible bond. Then Samus closed her eyes and breathed in, preparing to step out of her skin.

The entire front of the suit began to unfold and part like a bio-mechanical chrysalis. Alloyed armor plates, contractile cables, crystalline nerves, energy systems, and shield emitters all slid apart in a chaotic ballet. Samus moved one leg forward and now her armor remained behind. She walked forward into the room while in the corner of her eye the shit resealed itself. Tiny shimmers danced over the sliding metal and organic systems as small bits of matter dematerialized and reformed to permit this geometrically impossible process. She felt light; light and weak.

"Step forward into the next room."

Samus glanced up at the speaker as a portion of the white wall slid open to real a small corridor lined with sensors. It seems the people running this inspection were fine with her not striping off her blue interface-bodysuit. It was just as well, the linkages with her biology took almost twenty minutes to deintegrate especially after such a lengthy fusion. The spinal connections always tingled a bit. Samus stepped forward through the door.

This new little corridor was less well lit than the previous room. In fact it was positively dark compared to the blinding white which sealed off behind her. The one of the hallway's walls was mostly taken up by a long window looking into an adjacent, slightly elevated room that housed the specialists examining her. There, a number of human technicians and officers were glancing at the invisible readouts of sensors which were already having a field day after finally being able to peer into her unshielded body. Yin and Perez were missing, presumably being quickly debriefed. This inspection was a little like being on display but still Samus felt a small warmth of comfort. There was something primally reassuring about standing unguarded among people who looked like her. However, another part of her was growing tenser by the moment.

Sensors spun, flashed, and pinged her with invisible radiation while behind the glass the science team conversed in the illusion of privacy. It was trivially easy to read lips of you were fluent in the language. Well, fluency and the subject deciding to remain facing you.

One of the technicians turned around from inspecting a readout on the far wall, already in the middle of talking. "... programs not even recognizing her as human?"

The warm feeling began to drift away again.

Another technician glanced over. "...that far outside even any of the divergent population DNA lines? The....and those fully adapted space colonists from the pre-FTL days with the deformed skulls slip through and this lady doesn't? I know her file lists her as augmented but the system should have been taken that into account."

"Just look at this. It's not just some suite of soldier boosts, even the most extreme. Her bones are laced with carbon fiber and an alloy matrix. There's vibratic tensile fibers in her muscles, abnormal tendon reinforcement, and at least three stable nanobot colonies I've found so far. Half her nerve ganglia are now crystalline fiberoptic and I'm not even sure what some of these other implants are doing."

A third man was now just staring at Samus through the window with disbelief and something between pity and fear. She stared right back at him from inside the silent scan room.

He said, "Even with all these documents I can't imagine her medical history. Everything on the surface looks perfectly healthy, but... The modifications were all post-utero but started long before puberty. Fifteen percent of her DNA shows splicing and her cells have three organelles not native to any human population. There's what I assume is Chozo modification, semi-random damage from long term radiation exposure and acute phazon poisoning, metroid based DNA therapy, and what's documented in the file as some sort of classified parasite infection." He sighed.

"At this point she's basically scar tissue in the shape of a woman. It's-"

Then he suddenly noticed Samus' focus on his lips and turned away as he continued talking. She breathed out. Yes, she was certainly back among her species.

Evidently this inspection was taking longer than it should be because a tall man with bars on his shoulder stepped inside the other room and started saying something that, when he was periodically angled Samus' direction, looked rather loud.

"What's taking...damned scan?!"

"..."

"If...you override it! Just get... before... out here!" With that he turned and strode out of the room again.

Very quickly a voice came over the speakers in the narrow scanner hallway. "You may step forward into the next room."

Outside, Yin and Perez were waiting once more, now with a new complement of armored marines. From there the newly assembled convoy made its way down the ship corridors. Once or twice Yin and Perez tried to make light conversation but with all these gun barrels on hair triggers around her Samus didn't feel particular chatty.

Then they crossed a security airlock and saw up ahead a large dark room room covered with glowing analyst workstations. This was an absurdly well-outfitted ship. In fact down at the end of that room filled with advanced machinery and trained personnel was an armored door Samus recognized as the gateway to an Aurora unit housing. Indicators on the doorframe said it was empty. The mystery was growing by the minute.

There was a small group of people waiting at the edge of the room of where the white hallway intersecting that dark and blinking information cathedral. A black haired man in an unmarked dark jacket stood with his back to them, looking out at the banks of specialists and glowing computer displays. Whoever he was, he was flanked on each side by a taller man and woman in uniforms that bristled with obvious marks of rank. As Samus drew near the decorated man turned back and saw her. His expression was dour and unreadable as he leaned down slightly to whisper to the man in the blank coat. There was no visible reaction.

Officer Perez almost jumped as he snapped to attention when he recognized the people at the end of this hall. "Commander!"

The man in the dark jacket slowly turned as Samus got within a few paces of him. With casual interest she looked down and was met with piercing eyes staring up to meet hers. Her eyebrow ticked up slightly in provisional respect. So this was the man who controlled the interstellar fortress around them. There was a measure of power he exerted, which clashed invisibly against Samus' own presence in a way that unnerved the bystanders. His second in command edged forward, now trying to match stares on an even eye line with Samus but though he might meet her in height she had him beat by thirty pounds even before her special gifts were accounted for. Whatever sense of threat he was trying to project did not materialize.

The Commander continued inspect Samus. His eyes roved fearlessly over her body but there was no lust or anxiety, only a frustrated searching. She represented something to him, some resource he needed. The only question was what.

Then Samus heard Yin's voice behind her. "Um, sir? The tribunal is scheduled to start."

Well, they certainly weren't wasting any time. Which only made things more suspicious. Samus never trusted it when justice was swift.

...​

Samus slouched back in her chair behind a little desk facing a semicircle of elevated people in various highly decorated uniforms. Above, this chamber had an actual vaulted ceiling, almost preposterous on a military ship. The whole tribunal was a joke. Worse than that, it was boring.

She'd barely been escorted into the room when an officer with grey at her temples slid into the seat beside Samus and quickly started typing on the interface which flicked to life on the desk. From the way the woman did not seem at all concerned with Samus' existence she had to assume that this was her lawyer.

After a few moments typing the woman finally looked up and inspected Samus' face, eyes quickly dancing over the faint phazon corruption scars across her cheek. The lawyer's voice was brusk and businesslike.

"Aran, I'm Michelle Ortega and I'll be acting as your counsel today. I'm familiar with your case. Rather familiar in fact, since I've had sixteen months to prepare." There was a note of frustration there. "Just don't address the bench without speaking to me first. Nothing hurts a defendant more than talking too much. Got that?"

Samus continued looking at Ortega and leaned slightly further back in her chair. The chair creaked faintly.

"Perfect. Just like that." Ortega seemed as pleased as she was likely to get.

Then a general warning sounded out that the ship was warming up its jump drives to transfer systems in fifteen minutes. That actually did surprise Samus. It hadn't even been an hour since her apprehension, three hours since the ship dropped into this system, and this massive vessel was already basting off with all haste. That was a quick turnaround.

So this hadn't been a case of the Federation dispatching nearby teams to wherever they caught a whiff of Samus showing her head. Ortega had known she would have this assignment. This ship in particular had been hunting her for all this time. Or at least it had been consistently in the area, out here in the frayed edges of "civilized" space. What were they doing here? What could possibly be worth all the resources it took to operate this massive thing?

But once they dropped in and out of jump, hours passed while the other crew recovered from the physical and mental disorientation of warp jump. Samus sat in bored silence. Then the tribunal was talking again.

"...born to Virginia Aran and Rodney Aran on Colony K-2L. Most records were lost during the attack on..."

It still wasn't interesting. There was no need to listen to other people talk about her life. What was more important is what they weren't mentioning in all these procedures. Back in the examination chamber this crew hadn't received clearance to know the details of the X-parasite, and yet the metriod gene therapy directly resulting from her infection was easily displayed to them. Here the tribunal seemed to operating on the same level of information. Why was the metroid procedure declassified and not the details most relevant to the destruction of the SR388 Research Station?

Samus wished she could run these thoughts by Adam back on her ship, but the computerized mind was currently otherwise occupied. In fact she could currently hear his voice here in the tribunal room, listing off the many crimes against the Federation she had committed in the last two years. The Diomedes had of course copied Adam off the heavily modified but commercial grade memory banks of her gunship and the tribunal was currently interrogating selected snippets of his personality. He'd still be fine on the ship when Samus got back, but as she heard his voice reciting answers to all their questions and accusations it felt uncomfortably like she was being mocked by someone close to her.

However, if someone was trying to railroad her towards conviction, they were doing a very poor job of it. The list of charges they had levied against her were lengthy but utterly preposterous. Treason? Dereliction of duty? They had her dead to rights on a massive count of destruction of government property and grand theft, but here those points were muddled under a rambling thesis of conspiracy across decades. In fact the narrative seemed designed to bring up her best and most public actions; Zebes, the opening of Aether, the defense of Norion, and her assault on the Pirate home-world among others.

Samus narrowed her eyes. This narrative also mentioned the Chozo: mentioned them a lot, almost as much as her conflicts with the Space Pirates. Her childhood with them was frequently brought up, as were the technology of her suit and her enhancements. Even Tallon IV and Elesia were brought up in a rather forced way. Again, referencing the legacy of the Chozo. Most of those particular reports were signed "-N."

There was a hand behind all this. But in order to find out more Samus first had to sit through this interminable show. Old lessons of meditation came to her mind and as her stare locked on the head of the tribunal up on his bench. While he droned on about boring matters like treason and a threatened death penalty, her mind was cast out to the infinite web of existence that surrounded them all to the edge of the universe. So preoccupied, she didn't notice how profoundly uncomfortable that stare was leaving the man.

Then a change in his tone of voice snapped Samus back to attention.

"This tribunal finds Samus Aran guilty of the following charges: two grand counts of destruction of Federation property, unauthorized access of classified data, and reckless contamination of a planetary orbit."

Samus arched her eyebrow. Really, they didn't even find her guilty of stealing Adam? That charge at least was a slam dunk. They had the stolen property testifying in the tribunal room! Instead they transformed blowing up a multi-trillion credit Research Station into an orbital littering ticket.

The tribunal bench continued, "The recommended sentence is fifteen years imprisonment, commuted through government service and subject to parole. Commander Nakamura is hereby appointed as your overseer. You are to report to him to receive your assignment. You are now..."

Here there was a bit of confusion as Samus had already gotten up from her seat and pushed past the surprised marines on her way to the door. She stopped when she realized that the Chair had not actually signaled the end of the tribunal. Samus was now politely waiting by the door with two pulse rifles pointed at her head. She gave the Chair a vaguely apologetic nod.

"...Er, you are now free to go."

Samus gave a two finger wave and strode off to push open the chamber door with a bang. Commander Nakamura: there was not really enough to go on but Samus' trained intuition told her there were good odds she now knew who "-N." was. She remembered the short black haired man from the hallway. She remembered his stare. The master of this ship had written half the background documents for her trial. This was quite a lot of trouble to go through to arrange a meeting.

Out in the halls Samus took advantage of the confusion from her shifting legal status to blaze her own path through the ship, choosing directions based on wherever looked like the places that someone like her should least be allowed to go. The sound of rushing footsteps behind her showed that Officer Yin had managed to extract herself from the tribunal room and was still in some nominal sense Samus' guardian. Once Samus got in the lift she decided to let a now breathless Yin push the correct button after she just slid in through the closing doors.

Nakamura, Samus visualized his face, those dark and searching eyes. Let's see what you want.

....​

"Commander Nakamura will meet with you in his quarters."

Samus nodded to Officer Yin as the door to to the commander's room opened in front of her. Instantly, a lot of things became rather more clear. There was a consistent decoration theme in here and that theme was Chozo artifacts.

Miniature reproductions of statues lined a shelf and one wall was covered with a large and heavily engraved sheet of metal filled with the slashes and cuts of ornate Chozo script. Samus moved into the room, glancing at a framed slice of an ancient fresco mounted across from a piece of technology that even she didn't recognize off the top of her head. So, the commander was a fan of her second family.

Then she saw the man himself at far end of the room, once again standing with his back to her, now silhouetted against a full wall holo display. The commander who wore no decoration on his jacket. Behind her, the security door closed.

"Samus, it's good to meet you." Nakamura started talking without turning around. Glowing information continued to flow through the air in front of him. "I would have said more prior to the tribunal but given the uncertain nature of such proceedings I didn't want to unfairly get your hopes up. The sentencing was not my jurisdiction, though I had my hopes."

Samus quietly snorted. As commander of a newly constructed Aurora-class warship out here at the bleeding edge of Federation space the things that were not effectively under his jurisdiction were limited to certain laws of physics. The computer behind him displayed something about the movements of ships in this sector.

She was just waiting now for the other shoe to drop. Then Nakamura turned around and to her surprise his face was lined with worry. Something had him scared.

"Please, I need your help."

And there it was.

Nakamura continued to lay out his case. "I don't know what you've heard while hiding out here but things have been lively back in the core worlds. The Federation has been rolling back the Space Pirates since the end of the phazon crisis. Fantastic work there, of course."

Samus didn't say anything. She was naturally suspicious of praise from any source and right before someone asked her to do something was even more spine tingling. In her experience, pleasantries were rarely so.

Nakamura seemed to notice her reluctance. Perhaps in an attempt to set her at ease he moved over and sat down in a comfortable looking chair, but since Samus declined to notice his waved proffering of the other seat this maneuver just left her towering over him by still more.

"Right. Our business." He gathered his thoughts again. At least he didn't seem physically intimidated by her like many human men. "There's still an observation fleet enforcing a partial blockade on the Pirate home-world but most of the fleets had already fled out in every direction to the black beyond our reach. As a culture the Pirates put too many eggs in the phazon basket and without it they're still in full recovery mode. An entire society in corruption withdrawals. There hasn't been much threat from them as a result." Here he paused. "At least no direct threat."

He waved his hand and glowing information popped into existence in the air beside his chair. Samus glanced over and saw holographic images of different breeds of Space pirates and technical specifications on a wide range of different ships. Then she looked closer. Some of those ship specifications looked off.

Nakamura was talking again. "For the last twenty-three months Intelligence has been following traces of a certain Pirate splinter fleet. Not the biggest by any measure but it attracted attention by being distinctly...heterogeneous. Heterogeneous and rather well behaved. When they fled the home system they just seemed to follow their own strange path out through space with not a single notable raid to their credit. Of course that made us think something had to be wrong."

Samus had walked over and was now stood very directly in front of Nakamura's seat, obliviously infringing on his personal space as she carefully studied the display beside him. After an uncomfortable moment Nakamura flicked the information over onto another projector and Samus was led away but she was too far into her thoughts to notice the reason for this migration. They were showing at least five Pirate ethnicities operating as a single fleet operation. That was something Samus had never seen before.

The pirates were a morphologically diverse species, made more so by their total lack of augmentation taboos, but their old world-bound cultures still shone through in their strong tendency to only operate in related clans. It as a much stronger instinct than even Humans suffered under, though tempered by the Pirate's willingness to reassign ethnic lines under the surgeon's knife or gene-molder's tank. However, this fleet was acting differently and strange behavior from your enemy was always worrying.

Nakamura continued, "While the main Pirate fleets have been skipping around with small raids in their respective territories of unclaimed space, this band of misfits seems to have called dibs on the most hard to reach sectors and then burned hard out beyond our furthest listening posts." The shadows played over his face as the projector flickered to display new information. "When they came back into our range they were changed. Their behavior was oddly restrained. One report even has them paying for goods they needed on an inhabited world, not stealing and salvaging every bit of technology they found. Because they already found something. Something lost out in the dark beyond Federation space. Something powerful and old. Archeotech. But now their violence is increasing again and the fleet is getting closer to inhabited Federation worlds, searching for something else."

Now it came together. But Samus was very used to military officers talking around what needed to be said. Given the chance they'd leave out information the size of a mountain and expect a soldier to "adapt" before plowing into its side. This pirate fleet had found something powerful out in the depths of space and was now turned on to other similar payloads. They had tasted a new treat and they were hungry for more. And there was a reason Nakamura was out here at the fringes. A ship like the Diomedes was not built to chase, but to protect.

She decided to speed this up. "You've already found it."

Despite having chosen her for precisely this task, Nakamura was still impressed. "Yes, we did. Admittedly, we already had it long before we knew they were looking. Once we guessed the Pirates had found something Chozo it wasn't hard to guess what was at the center of their narrowing search pattern out in this sector. Whatever was in their cache must have only described the general location of this other base." He nodded at the computer and once again the entire far wall lit up into a window-like display of a planetary landscape. A dry rocky landscape reaching up to a mountain of almost preposterous scale. "Admittedly we could still be wrong about their target but if they're collecting Chozo stuff out here then I'm feeling pretty safe about my bet."

In the light of the projected screen, Samus looked out at a mountain as thin wisps of clouds slowly splashed against its flanks. She had to agree with Nakamura; The carved image on the mountainside of a seated Chozo pointing forward was a pretty good sign. Since it was over half a mile tall and apparently wrought from more living stone than a whole city, one might even call it a great sign. The statue was larger than this entire ship. She smiled to herself. No one had ever called the Chozo self-effacing.

Nakamura saw that smile, but his face was still grave. "Now the crux. The Pirate fleet is coming, and there are five thousand human colonists living at the base of that statue. We only have a week to prepare and defend them."

That certainly changed the tone.

The commander was pacing in his cabin as the ship intercom announced preparations for yet another warp jump. Samus let him do so as she continued to cycle her finger in the air, scrolling through the information the ship's computer was projecting in front of her. He continued his lecture.

"This isn't the first time the Pirates have salvaged and adapted foreign technology. In fact, that's nearly all they do. I mean, you know that." Deliberate informality injected into his speech to build rapport. He was a good speaker. Possibly gained his advancement through politics. That wasn't a mark against him, just a different skill set.

He was chatty though. "Not that we humans can be to superior on the issue of technologic scavenging. I doubt there's a multi-system species in this galactic arm that hasn't been combing through the Chozo's ashes. They were invincible, rulers of space for five thousand years. Then they just...collapsed. In the span of a few centuries their dominion splintered, fleeing to hermitages and before disappearing completely leaving only...Well, that's not important right now."

Nakamura shook his head. "We've, I mean the Federation, have been learning what we can. Trying to rebuild something like the Pax Chozo in this region of space. The Elesia research base eventually gave us the clues to planet J-4M here, though not without resisting. This planet wasn't on the standard lists of Chozo contacted systems. We only inferred its existence from forensic data, and extrapolated its location from a curious absence of recorded ship routes. But this little world may be the real treasure we were waiting for."

He gestured to the image of the planet, mostly brown with wide ice caps at both poles. "The Chozo love of secrecy hid it well. But unfortunately our current intelligence on these Pirates isn't much better. At first Sig Int were very confident since this splinter fleet of ours seemed much more talkative than normal, positively oozing communication traces as they left home-world and headed out to the black. But it's mostly unintelligible chatter to our code-breakers if its code at all. The best interpretation leaves the bulk of it as devotional wailings. These Pirates sound like a cult."

Samus frowned. Cult-like behavior? That didn't make sense. The Space Pirates were notoriously indisposed to religion. They took an almost pathological pride in their materialism, consigning the fields of philosophy and morality to the babbling of children. This was all very strange. Well, she could understand why Nakamura wanted an expert on Pirates, in addition to his Chozo fascination.

At that point he turned dramatically, arm held out to sweep her into his next topic. "The thing you must..."

He wobbled a bit off his step when he saw Samus wasn't there anymore and was instead now across the room. She glanced up from where she casually leaned against the wall and gave him a finger twirling "go on" signal. He did, but Samus thought that he was faintly offended she was not fully buying into his theatrical presentation.

"Yes. Well, for how open handed the Chozo were at their height they took the balance of their most valuable secrets to the grave or wherever they went. Frankly, I'm a bit jealous if the Pirates found something this useful out there. We humans missed the largés of the late Chozo empire by just a few centuries at most and even down on J-4M we're mostly left with poetic prophecy and black boxes. And even with putting our Aurora unit down on the planet surface to help decipher, none of the relics have proved useful yet. They are pretty though."

He was gesturing to the inscribed slab on his wall with something approaching reverence in his eyes. Samus looked over too, casually peering a little closer to read the elaborate script out of curiosity for whatever the commander had scrounged up. Then she half choked in surprise as she blinked rapidly to clear the whatever emotion he might see on her face.

It was a poem, and the poem was filthy. Flowery and poetic, rife with metaphor, but absolutely obscene to its core. Samus was left struggling between bursting out laughing and burning with mortification. The bit about beaks and mountains alone was almost too much.

Nakamura continued, oblivious. "So much wisdom held inside. Now they're gone and we're just left with frustration. If only we could strip away the ornamentation and get a grasp on what they were really saying."

It took Samus a considerable amount of mental energy to remain expressionless. Apparently Nakamura's translator was serviceable but not culturally fluent. Mercifully he got back to the matter of the Pirates.

"But however they managed it, this Pirate fleet has shown signs of a technologic jump and a singleminded pursuit of more Chozo relics. Their first find has improved their ships considerably. J-4M must be defended, not just for the lives of the colonists and scientists down on the surface but because we can not allow this Pirate fleet to rejoin contact with the rest of their population. This fleet is behaving odd and we like the enemy we know."

Samus could agree to that. Truthfully, that expression might also describe why she had worked with the Federation so often.

Nakamura looked back at her, tilting his head down slightly even though she was much taller than him. "Well, there you go. All my cards on the table. You've got decades more experience and wisdom with this type of thing than any of my people. Out here at the edge, we humans are on a bit of tightrope but we're in it together. I'd ask you to help though you've already got a tribunal sentencing ordering you to do so." He met her eyes, dark brown locking on blue. "But I'll ask you anyway. Will you help us?"

Wisdom, he said. Samus breathed heavily. Her oldest enemies were arming themselves with her own strength and she had to figure out a way to take it back. With all this talk of the Chozo around her, Samus did not feel wise. Despite being around enough other humans to remind her that even if she didn't look it she was now over fifty years old, the carvings and the statues still made her feel so very young. Young and lost.

Her lips parted without conscious thought, catching her off guard with a whisper; a bit of wisdom long ago drilled into not just her head but her muscle. "Energy is matter."

"What?" Nakamura was startled by this seeming non sequitur. Then Samus realized that she had spoken in Chozo. But why had she spoken at all? It had risen unbidden from the unconscious depths of her mind. She hadn't spoken that language in decades.

Still, Samus felt no need to repeat herself. She barely knew why she said it herself. Somehow it felt like meditation, the techniques of generating new discovery from deep within the mind, like prophecy. So she continued to recite the rest of that old lesson, though switching languages to the commander's own. The translation didn't hold up, but she doubted Nakamura was conversational in the Chozo. "Matter is life, life is thought, and thought is energy. Past and future are the same present. All divisions are an illusion."

It was the first lesson and the last; the one her second family had tried to drill into her again and again. They called it the Blood of the Chozo. They said it was the sum total of all wisdom. Their eyes had smiled in a familiar sad way when she said that she understood. They had said it was ok that she didn't. Not yet. What did it mean that this had come back to her now?

Nakamura was over his startlement and gave a faint and weary smile of his own. "Why Aran, that was almost at speech. Not really relevant, but I'll take what I can get."

Then the final jump warning alarm went off. Samus and Nakamura sat down and strapped themselves in as outside the cabin porthole Officer Yin did the same. The Diomedes' metal ribs hummed as it prepared to head to J-4M, to protect another set of humans hunched at the feet of the Chozo from the specter of the Space Pirates. Samus supposed that for her it was a bit like going home. She breathed deeply and found peace within herself. With great and terrible power, the ship lurched beyond the speed of light

When they fell out of jump they met the communications of a colony that was already screaming.

...​

 

[Cuofeng]

...
Chapter 3: War in Heaven
...​

Vibrations and distorted vision signaled Diomedes dropping out of jump with a soundless thump that hit the soul. Samus glanced over at her designated overseer. Nakamura looked rather groggy and pale at the moment; hyper jump was really disorienting to any mind not disciplined enough to handle it. But still, the people on this ship were experienced space crew and would be back to busy operation in thirty seconds or so. Samus closed her eyes again and tried to take advantage of this last moment of meditation available to her. Breath and the slow beat of her heart was an anchoring rhythm. There was something moving in the fabric of fate; a thought hiding at the back of her mind. She sat and tried to recapture it in the music of silence.

Then the ship shuddered in pain. A blaring alarm instantly filled the air as Samus' eyes snapped open. Nakamura fumbled for the computer controls as Samus was already out of her restraint seat and bolting towards the cabin door.

Nakamura called into the coms. "What's...Bridge, report! What just happened?"

He was still disoriented, they all were. It would be a few more seconds before the human crew truly registered that the ship was under attack.

Samus slammed the emergency release on the commander's cabin door as she barreled out into the hallway, rebounding off the wall to change directions more quickly. One of the decorative panels cracked under her shoulder and Officer Yin was thrown back into her restraint seat as she tried to rise but Samus was already gone down the passage at a full run.

From behind her, Nakamura yelled out, "Samus, what are...?! Dammit! Bridge, emergency alert and full countermeasures authorized. Fire on all targets! Clear our space!"

Samus' feet pounded on the hallway floor. They'd dropped into an ambush. The Pirates had somehow tricked the Diomedes into predicting a much longer path for the splinter fleet than they actually took. Now they were already waiting for the Federation's return to the colony planet.

The pirates or someone else. She had to consider possibilities. In any case, the Diomedes was caught in the teeth of a trap and as Samus ran the huge ship shuddered again from another impact against the already stressed shields.

Silent cursing filled her head as Samus ached for the missing navigation displays from her suit visor. Her previous path through this ship had been too circuitous so she was relying on pure intuition from her time on other Federation ships to find the straightest route to her destination. At this point she just had to hope that the lead designer of this new vessel class was human so she was working off the correct layout assumptions. She dropped down a stair port without once touching a single step and now there were uniformed crew around her rushing to their combat stations. They all had other things to worry about and on a military vessel anyone running with this amount of determination was unconsciously granted at least a provisional sergeant rank so they got out of her way.

There, Samus thought, spotting a directory on the wall as she ran by. The intersection of munitions and quarantine. That's where they'd be keeping it. She was charging down an empty corridor but she knew better than to think that no one was watching her.

"Nakamura!" she yelled at the blank walls. "My suit!"

Then she rounded a corner and two armored marines stood between her and the destination.

Both weapons snapped up in response to the six-foot woman suddenly leaping through the bulkhead airlock and charging their position. Time slowed for a second as Samus' foot came down, two gun barrels targeted her heart, and one of the marines reflexively cocked his head as a coms voice began to speak in his helmet. Nakamura's crew was quick on the uptake and seemed to be already granting Samus clearance to pass by.

Unfortunately, that conversation would take a few seconds too long. Samus leaned back from her dash into a slide, letting her momentum close the distance as her toe shot up to catch tip of the first Marine's weapon, deflecting it up. Then her hand shot out to grab his armored ankle. There were a few crashes as the two soldiers were rendered into a state of no longer blocking the hallway and Samus regained her feet in a single smooth motion, recovering the small bit of speed she'd lost. She raced off again. People in power armor never expected an unarmored human to match their strength.

The quarantine lab fortunately had time to respond to the bridge's warning and the correct sequence of doors were open and clear for her, laying a path free of otherwise necessary violence. Then, there at the end of the corridor, a single suit of orange armor stood in an empty room. Even at full sprint, Samus felt a slow breath slide out of her lungs. The front of the armor shimmered and began to slide open. It needed no signal to recognize her.

Then they met and she was whole once more.

...​

The Diomedes bridge blazed with red tinted combat lighting. Screens and holo displays blinked warnings as the seats deployed crew's void suits onto their bodies even as they worked the controls. Commander Nakamura gripped a passing lieutenant's shoulder for stability as he skidded onto the bridge and his station, panting after the run from his cabin. He didn't bother yelling, right now all his crew knew their orders, but his eyes flickered from display to display as his brain overheated processing the mess outside their hull. Hostile ships in every direction, and the planet stretched out below them. They were almost surrounded. Then the hostile markers were blinking red as they shifted around the map display.

To his right one of the crew reported. "Shield load spiking up to eighty percent but still holding."

"Bay two fighter launches complete."

"Direct hit. Enemy corvette disabled."

New alarms started flashing. "Commander! Data intrusion against servers Beta and...! Sir, intrusion on every network! They're ripping through our firewalls. They've got access to everything! I can't stop them!"

"Intrusion traced to...! Onboard! Quarantine level!"

Nakamura finished bucking himself into his combat station. Onboard? He could guess what that meant. "Deprioritize that intrusion. I know what that is. It's Aran."

"Sir, marines reporting single attacker on deck-"

"Yeah, that'll be her too." Half symbols on the screens abruptly turned red and the ship shuddered. "Focus on punching us out of this damn encirclement! Light them all up!"

News of disaster from the colony below filled his screen. The planet-bound Aurora unit was still filling a communication line with its coded assessment of the ongoing Pirate ground assault. Out here hostile ships were on every side, surrounded the lone Federation vessel and its spreading cloud of fighters. Nakamura felt a smile twitch at the corner of his lips. For a ship like Diomedes, surrounded meant that half of those hostiles would soon be relevant only as floating debris. There was a reason the Federation felt comfortable with Diomedes acting alone out here.

His chair vibrated faintly as the bones of the ship hummed. The main canon was charging.

The display in front of him continued blinking the colony's distress message. They had been under attack for three hours.

...​

Information flooded in front of Samus' eyes. System warnings from across the ship. Telemetry data from the attackers out in space. Communications between combat stations as the crew of hundreds all rushed to their designated tasks.

The suit's haptic feeds and audio queues integrated everything into her awareness in a way that even the best computer terminal could only dream of. That cumulative pound and a half of Chozo computing could equal anything human built short of a full Aurora unit. Right now, Samus was busy convincing those same systems that it wasn't worth smashing through every bulkhead in a straight line to her gunship in the hanger. There were currently enough people trying to put holes in this ship without Nakamura having to deal with holes spreading from within.

The Diomedes briefly hummed around her and two enemy indicators on her visor winked off outside the ship as Samus charged down the corridors. That would be the main cannon. Samus approved.

However, this whole ambush attack didn't make sense. Without phazon corruption maddening their decision makers the Pirates just didn't take risks like this. That rag tag splinter fleet Nakamura had shown her was practically guaranteed to lose at least half their numbers before they even scratched something like Diomedes. If they'd managed to get intelligence of the Federation ship being out of system, then the Diomedes should have dropped in to see the fleet scrambling to lift off from the planet J-4M with whatever loot they'd managed to grab during the the ship's absence. But instead nearly everything the Pirates had was out here in high orbit, waiting for a heavily armed battleship to drop out of jump.

Samus didn't like when things didn't make sense. But despite her confusion and unease, in the middle of this battle a familiar sense of balance was rising within her. She could feel her heart beating in her veins. There was a rhythm in her bones. There was part of her that loved this. Then, just before she reached the hanger, her suit flashed a warning as a horrendous crash ripped through the ship.

She continued forward and leaped through a twisted and damaged airlock door as a hurricane of atmosphere suddenly rushed past her, sucked into the hanger by a new vacuum. Her boots locked on the deck in an easy resistance but she stopped anyway to stare out at the newly missing outer wall. She was looking into the black of space. The ship's hull now ended at the edge of the hanger in glowing molten edges, blinding orange against the void, a void that flashed with the blazing spears of laser fire. Outside, new constellations swirled as missiles swooped towards their targets across thousands of miles. Comparatively tiny fighters swerved and sparkled in dogfights before they took a wrong move and bloomed into brief shining novas. All without a sound but the rushing of air from behind her.

In the hanger, Samus sprang forward. With each muted thud of her boots against the deck and each rumble of the suit's jets, ripples of speed boost energy formed around her armor as she accelerated towards the missing wall. Off to the right, her gunship was already powered up and broke free of its bonds, her suit's Chozo hacking smashing against the electric locks that restrained it. Samus didn't need to signal any plan; from inside the shipboard computer Adam knew her history well enough to predict what she was about to do and her personality well enough to not bother advising against it. Samus raced on, still building speed as energy shimmered around her.

Then she reached the melted edge of the hanger and jumped, thrusting her legs back as she thundered out into the black silence of vacuum. She smiled as the imagined music of battle whispered in her ears. She rocketed through space, alone.

Samus set her suit into a slight spin, taking in the conflict that stretched for a twenty thousand miles in each direction around her. For this moment she was too small a target to be focused on so she could think and plan without worrying about evasion. There were over fifty Pirate ships of significant size but they were getting shredded, or rather some of them were. Certain other ships were standing firm against the Federation munitions and something out here had ripped a hundred meter gash in the side of Diomedes. The Pirates had new weapon.

A metal surface thumped into her boots from behind, acceleration creating an imitation of gravity. The gunship had caught up to her and Samus was now standing on its nose, a lone woman perched on a mountain peak as it revolved through space.

"Adam," she murmured. "Where did the hanger blast originate from?"

The digital mind spoke from the gunship. "At this point, I believe I will simply transfer that question over to the Diomedes' encrypted communications. A few of them have been quite loudly wondering what you've been doing."

A second later, as Samus flipped backwards into the void before launching headfirst through the gunship's briefly open airlock, voices exploded into her helmet.

"Aran!" It seems Nakamura had seized the bridge coms. "That shot pierced straight through our shields with only forty percent power loss! It's frequency shifting or something...we're still analyzing. That's something new, and way too dangerous. Get back in on Diomedes this moment; we can't afford to lose you here!"

During the commander's pause for breath Adam gently interjected for Samus' ears only. "The beam origin is now marked for you."

Samus twirled as she maneuvered inside the tight gunship cabin, and locked into the cockpit harness. She glanced out the view-screen into space just in time to notice the blaring alarm of an incoming locked missile. A nearly mortal fifteen Gs of burn blasted the gunship out of the way at the last minute as she and Adam wordlessly plotted a weaving, twisting course toward the largest Pirate vessel.

Nakamura's voice came back over coms. He sounded resigned now. "And there's the intrusion alarm in our combat computers so I suppose you have the beam origin already. At least you're now out of range to keep hacking us but, Aran, be careful."

The battle was chaotic. Diomedes was successfully retreating towards the planet's distant horizon but that path turned the main guns away from the remaining bulk of the enemy fleet and the Pirates were pursuing. In fact, the largest Pirate vessel and its escorts were actually gaining on the powerful Federation battleship's acceleration. Again, that shouldn't be possible.

The expanse between this chase was filled with the clash of smaller ships. Dying fighters exploded like blazing confetti. Missiles detonated in a constant sparkle of pinpricks as laser shots traces a strobe-like web. Samus' ship dove into the heart of this.

A target reticule popped up on the cockpit display and a hunter missile fired from the gunship as Samus' finger twitched in command. She wasn't entirely sure if she or Adam had fired it. The AI clone of her old commander had evolved since those days when he had been issued in the failed attempt to control her. By now they'd reached a point where they barely talked to each other. Samus liked that.

A GF fighter radioed thanks as that missile shredded the Pirate raider that had been bearing down on it from behind. Samus just tapped "acknowledged" as her yellow ship continued its knifelike plunge down the battle's neck.

Her cockpit shook as a partial hit nearly blew out one of the shield emitters. Samus jerked the controls and a hard evasive turn hit her with enough acceleration that she could feel it in her organs even through the ship and suit's dampeners. Another alarm went off. Atmosphere was venting through a pinprick somewhere on the gunship but she didn't bother with that. In fact, the cabin was only pressurized at all because she never bothering to change the factory settings on this latest replacement ship. She never risked removing her suit amid vacuum, no matter how secure things seemed. That was the sort of lesson you only needed to learn once in a lifetime.

The gunship fired again and again. A hundred miles away a breacher missile exploded against the side of a mottled black Pirate cruiser.

Adam's voice imposed itself over the alarms, silencing them. "The ship missile stocks are being depleted rapidly. This model is not suitable for this type of combat mission. I predict a seventy percent chance of total destruction before you manage to breach the Pirate command ship. Do you understand the risks?"

Text flashed onto the view screen. "Yes/No"

Her thumb twitched to the right to select the option as a smile floated onto her lips. "Yes"

Adam simulated a sigh. "I assumed as much. Well, I no longer regret being forcibly duplicated onto the Diomedes systems. No matter how they treated that copy, it is some small degree of enforced immortality." There was a slight pause, filled with the flashing of frustrated ignored alarms. "I wish I could do the same for you, Samus."

"Then let's not die."

Fighting in space was so quiet. Explosions sparkled like scattered gems but the gunship only made any sound when it was changing velocity or firing, or when an enemy's attack came near enough to brush against the shields. Otherwise, no matter how violent the spectacle outside, it unfolded in perfect silence. That was true even if every mammalian instinct screamed that it should be hearing the end of the world.

A beam of blinding light split the black expanse, erupting from the Pirate command ship to splash against the back of distant Diomedes in a shimmer of purple and gold and fire. That should have made noise.

Samus felt her heart thud as she watched the massive beam wink out. It had to be the weapon that had slashed across the hanger bay earlier. This told her that it had a long recharge cycle but even so she doubted Diomedes' ability to withstand a third hit. Nakamura's encrypted transmissions to his fighters in the battle had fallen silent. Possibly that beam had damaged something important to their communications. Samus locked her eyes on the enemy ship as she dove and rolled to avoid more Pirate fighters. So it was true, the Pirates had found some piece of new technology out in the wilds. None of this changed her mission but it added a more definite time limit.

She had to board the Pirate Command ship, find whatever ancient treasure these raiders had unearthed, destroy it, and escape preferably while disabling the vessel, all before the weapon recharged. She could do this. She could probably do this. Adam helpfully flicked a countdown to the top corner of her visor as all the while warning lights continued to blink around the cockpit.

Then her gunship exploded.

For half a second, sound and fire engulfed her. Then it was gone and Samus frantically twisted in her seat to see that fifteen feet of the side of her ship had been replaced with a jagged sparking hole into space. The stars outside were spinning.

Adam was speaking in her helmet. "Direct hit sustained. Catastrophic damage. Primary engine offline. Secondary engine failing. Reactor containment failing. Missile launch offline. Computer cooling-"

Samus interrupted. "Final burst of thrusters to confirm a near miss trajectory then red-line secondary engine without limiters, followed by complete transmission cutoff. Now."

She felt the dying ship shudder and screech under her as it complied. The fitful, intermittent rumble of the secondary engine told her that it was trying its best, even if it could only manage this for a few more moments of acceleration. Luckily they had already been going very fast and the enemy shouldn't bother targeting them again. It was easy to pretend to be a disabled wreck when you absolutely were.

She detached from her restraints and moved to the shattered hole in the side of her ship. Outside, the dark mass of the Pirate Command ship was growing larger with each appearance from the gunship's slow axial revolutions. The enemy ship's long spines glowed with dull purple illumination as it hung amid the stars, seemingly motionless even as this view spun. Then the vibrations in the gunship's hull stopped as the last engine failed. Her ship was completely inoperable and they were not on course to impact the command ship, if only by a few miles. Suit calculations said that at current angles the wreck would orbit the planet obliquely for twenty-six months before the orbit decayed into the atmosphere. Tactically irrelevant. Samus smiled. Really, it was almost perfect.

But she had to move fast. She reached up to grab the twisted metal edge of the hole in the hull before twisting and flinging herself out onto the still spinning exterior, free of gravity but fighting the rotational inertia all the way. Her boots locked down with a magnetic clunk as her inner ear tried and failed to do the same. She walked across the still spinning hull as her left hand signed out the commands to initiate downloading the gunship's computers into her suit systems. Adam would be coming with her. The Pirate ship rotated into view again, it was growing closer, then it was gone again and the planet rose again to fill the sky before its own descent.

"Data transfer speeds insufficient to complete task with the timeframe." Adam's voice was already losing the more subtle inflections. Those shipboard systems were heavily damaged. "Most transmitters are offline. You can not risk detection by boosting the signal strength. Do you understand?"

Samus had found what she was looking for, a fold in the outer hull where the armor was thickest. It would have to do and she could only hope that the fuselage hadn't cracked too much. She gestured to the right and the gun that surround her forearm began to expand and glow as segmented chunks of metal rearranged. The gunship completed another rotation and the Pirate Command ship swung by in a new arc, growing closer all the time. The pirates, the planet, and her; all spinning in space.

Adam was still speaking, "Download thirty percent complete. I have rigged the reactor and the remaining munitions together. Your maneuver window is closing." She hadn't vocalized her plan but it was obvious enough, even as pieces of Adam's memory overheated one by one.

She had to time this right. The gunship hurtled on, still spinning. Projected dotted lines in space appeared in Samus' visor as the powerless ship coasted towards the final calculation. There! Her gun let out a vibrating hum as an orb of white energy slowly detached from the barrel, small arcing sparks forming a web that held it still in that crook of the hull. The center portion of the orb was raised and seemed to be revolving; spinning faster and faster as the light it emitted curiously dimmed. Samus scrambled across the hull, magnetics and muscles fighting the centripetal force as she struggled to get more of the ship between her and that energy egg. You did not want to be standing by a Power Bomb when it hatched.

A flash of light and an impact like a mountain smashed through Samus' bones. Shards of metal slashed at her suit, draining a bit of shield strength as the magnetic systems surged to ensure she wasn't thrown off the hull. But after that single second there was only silence again; silence and the Pirate Command ship which was now directly in front of their newly modified trajectory.

Adam's voice was in her ear. "Successful maneuver."

Samus glanced at the indicator in the corner of her vision. "Download 52%" It would have to be enough. Samus moved back to the rear of the gunship, finding the exact middle of the spinning axis. Adam had been reconstituted from worse. And there was no time for apologies. So she bent her knees, aimed carefully, and jumped with all her might up into the empty void of space.

The gunship hulk hurtled on down towards the side of the Pirate vessel and Samus trailed directly behind it at only a slightly lesser speed, just another piece of wreckage thrown free from the hull after some damaged systems must have produced a rogue weapons detonation. The Pirate command ship expanded against the stars below her as she fell towards it. A careful twist of her legs and she canceled out her rotational inertia, setting up a stable reference point to the command ship. Everything according to plan. Still, she held her breath as the next few seconds passed. But the Pirates didn't even bother shooting down the carcass that was aimed at their side. Nothing of the gunship's mass could do more than scratch the hull of a ship that large. That is, if four buster missiles and a warp-class antimatter reactor weren't all rigged to detonate on impact.

Samus felt her smile slip a notch. It was a pity she couldn't hear the explosion.

The flash was still pretty and as soon as it erupted Samus was firing hard with all the thrusters on her suit, bleeding out as much of this velocity as possible. The suit vibrated and hummed, Varia components venting heat buildup, as she plummeted down to a scorched hole in the side of curbed black metal. Despite herself, Samus squinted. This was still going to be be a hard landing.

She hit the inner bulkhead at a relative two hundred and sixty three miles per hour.

It only took a few seconds for the suit and her enhancements to ameliorate the resulting concussion, at least enough to allow her to get her bearings. It took a few seconds longer to extract her lower half from the hole she'd punched in the wall. It was an undignified, wiggling, metal melting procedure that left Samus annoyed, face first on the floor, and in the perfect mood to turn her attention to the two poleaxed Space Pirates in maintenance crew void-suits who apparently had been watching this entire performance. Samus raised her power beam as they belatedly turned to run, their pincers raised in panic. Sometimes it really didn't pay to be the first responder.

...​

 

[Cuofeng]

Chapter 4: The Fall

...​

Samus' fight raced through the halls of the Pirate ship. Her visor displays were still notifying her that the suit's screw attack components had been dissolved into energy to absorb that first high speed impact. At least it hadn't been any of the more crucial systems; she could deal with that one ability being cannibalized. Her weapon still worked and she was currently blazing a path of destruction through a vessel that did not expect boarding via meteor.

A gun clattered across the ground as a purple-shelled Pirate slowly slipped down from the dent it had left in the far wall. Samus held out her right arm and shot off three blasts through the smoke and frost that now filled the room, hitting three cameras in each corner. A tap at her temple shifted her view and through the far wall she saw the dim x-ray outlines of five heavily armed pirates gathering in the next room to stem her advance. As she watched, one was angrily hitting its arm presumably trying to convince some interface to give a view of her room.

So she waited. A few seconds passed as Samus idly shifted her weight back and forth. She took another look at her suit shield readouts. She'd managed to absorb enough energy from that last power main she'd gained access to that the suit was almost back up to her current operating capacity. Behind the wall, the pirates were still panicking. Samus briefly flicked her visor back to normal view and looked at that wall again without penetrating scans. Then she returned to watching the marshaling strike team through the wall but she wondered at what she'd just seen. This was the first time she had ever seen art on a pirate vessel. It was...disturbing.

The Pirates finally lost their patience or worked up their nerve. They moved over, opened the door, and were instantly met by the shrapnel of said door exploding under a charged super missile blast. The first to stand up screamed as the next shot from Samus' gun froze three quarters of its body into a grisly statue. Samus hoped she'd managed to download enough of Adam's personality before the gunship blew. It would be a hassle to rip his backup out of the Diomedes servers. The remaining Pirates were screeching as Samus leapt through the air, dodging their shots in order to line up one of her own as her weapon shifted and glowed with charging energy. The enhanced plasma shot pierced through three of them and they fell back, trailing smoke and viscera. Her suit shield power indicator flowed upwards.

After a moment the shield indicator ticked up slightly one more time. Apparently one of the Pirates had taken longer to die than she would have guessed. Energy is matter, matter is life, life is thought, and thought is energy. Old lessons, drilled into her head long ago. The suit's harvest system was merely a practical demonstration.

These Pirates were a motley bunch. She briefly scanned the scattered bodies that littered this vaulted hall. There were purple shelled Zebezian tribes, the claws and fangs of the Talon fleet, and one example of the thin digitigrade legs and four eyes of the gene-line that had been on top of the home-world ladder during the phazon assault. What was it that brought these dregs together? Samus remembered the strange art in the other hall. There had been two abstract bipedal figures, presumably Pirates, floating in a web of swirling patterns. She wondered which group had painted it.

Then a low crackling roar rumbled through the long corridors, bouncing off bulkheads and ruined Pirate bodies. Samus' weapon snapped up, a beam attack already charging as her heart thudded so hard she felt her teeth vibrate. Her visor said that it was just a sound over the ship speakers, but Samus recognized that voice without needing the suit to list out the identification. That screech was etched on her bones. Ridley was on this ship.

Samus burst forward, ripping through bulkheads, firing off missiles into any open hatchway as she made her way towards the ship's center. As she ran, Ridley's voice echoed around her, every speaker screaming threats and orders to the Pirate crew. Samus retreated into the calm of battle meditation. She'd killed Ridley so many times before. He was the Pirate's perfect general, bred for war and cloned endlessly, modified to the absolute peak of their society's ability, dispatched to anywhere they needed a champion. And she'd killed him over twelve times.

The fight continued into what seemed to be an engineering access. So, this splinter fleet had their own Ridley; unexpected but at least they would only have the one. Ridley, the "ultimate commander", never tolerated any perceived threat to his authority even from himself. Samus' left hand threw out a grapple beam to draw the next Pirate close as a briefly living shield against his comrades' fire. Then she fired from behind it and a second later her shield energy levels ticked up a few more times. She advanced, as behind her one of the ship's primary engine rooms exploded under her departing missile barrage.

She was leaving a trail of destruction behind her but it was almost purely incidental. She was searching for the artifact; whatever technological haul the Pirates had found deep out in space that wet their appetites for the J4M colony. However, the ship's computers were putting up a surprisingly firm resistance to her suit's scans; taking terminals off the network almost as quickly as she could access them. It was curiously good security for the Pirates. It managed to stand up against her Chozo tech but in doing so the defense betrayed itself. Samus plotted a course to the part of the ship that went dark to her the quickest. That was where their greatest treasure would be.

Then one final door exploded before her and Samus ran into an anticlimactically dim room. After passing, and damaging, lab after lab and endless factory lines assembling new weapons she had expected this most secret chamber to be more dramatic. The dark room was still large and high ceilinged, important enough to be made accessible for even Ridley's great bulk, but the space was deserted and had a pervasive air of disuse. A single large cube, each side over twice Samus' height, took up most of the room. A dim golden light glowed from under the tarp that covered it.

Blue energy cracked around Samus' left hand as her grapple whip shot out and threw back the heavy tarp in a second. The cube was Chozo all right, she recognized the glowing golden lines that decorated its engraved metal sides. However, she had no idea what this thing could possibly be. Her scan gave back nothing but some low level power source and an encoded Chozo warning not to approach. The Pirates didn't even seem to be using the damn thing. There were no cables hooking it up to the ship computers, no disassembled components laid out to reveal their secrets. Just a lone abandoned box.

Then the room's only other door opened with a hail of blaster fire that heralded the end of investigation time. Samus threw herself behind the cube to just barely avoid most of the subsequent missile barrage as a full troop of armored Pirate commandos advanced into the room at a full run. She needed to go. That first blaster volley had hit her shields unsettlingly hard. From cover her gun was already charging, devastating energy washing her face with white light as power built inside the barrel.

Her weapon-bound right hand made a sign and the gun morphed slightly, even as she sprang back to leap off the wall behind her. The charged beam spread out in wide stream of piercing energy, throwing the Pirates back as it cracked their power armor. Unfortunately two of them seemed to almost completely ignore that wave beam attack. Samus noticed the white markings on their armor. Great, some of that advanced weapon-immunity armor. Someone had scavenged equipment from the old Talon fleet. She really hated those.

The other Pirates were also standing back up far too quickly for Samus' liking. Her weapon changed configuration again as she quickly waved that arm in an arc, her visor lighting up with a flurry of missile locks. However, these Pirates were soldiers. They reacted in a split second and threw up energy barriers from their off hands, setting a wall of oval shields in a semicircle before her. It would have been brilliant, if the gun Samus pointed that way was actually aiming at them.

Samus' arm shivered with recoil as a stream of missiles shot out in a sweeping arc. In the instant before they hit the Pirate barriers the missiles swerved up and over to slam into the mystery cube. Even that many explosions all converged on a single point was not enough to destroy Chozo metal, but it was enough to crack it. The super missile that followed it was what actually blew open a hole into some inner compartment of the cube, and the next was enough to thoroughly ruin whatever was inside. The one after that was mostly for fun.

Even Samus had to admit the next few missiles were probably redundant.

A moment later she skidding out into the hallway, her armored shins raising sparks as they left scratches in the metal floor. One of the Pirate elites was dead, another injured and confined by ice for the next couple seconds, but that still left too much firepower for Samus to want to deal with. Whatever that cube had been she had destroyed it. Luckily this ship's builder seemed to have really liked long straight corridors. Samus felt her heart fall back into a steady rhythm as she ran. Blaster fire impacted her from behind, draining her shields, but a sheathe of shimmering energy began to build up around her suit as she accelerated still faster. She ran and in a moment she was a blinding streak that crossed the length of the ship like lightning.

Scan said that the main hangar was through that next bulkhead in front of her. Samus squinted her eyes as there was a slight crunch. Then there was no longer a bulkhead and she was in the hanger.

Samus slammed to a screeching stop and then jerked to the side as her suit jets threw her off at an angle, dodging a blast of the hanger's point defense cannons. Ridley was screaming out over the ship coms again but he still hadn't decided to show his face. Unfortunately a great number of his underlings had. A rather great number. Samus was already firing but it was mostly suppressive at the moment as she quickly dashed for cover.

Metal scraped metal as she thudded her back against a bit of solid looking machinery. She needed to get off this ship. Information flew across her eyes as she scanned the Pirate systems even as their powerful data security continued to push her back. Suit missile stocks were still pretty good though so she stuck her right arm out from behind her cover and shot out a few more at any target lock that popped up to her suit systems. In the middle of the following series of explosions a deeper rumbling traveled up her legs from the hanger floor. Samus looked up to see an inner hanger wall open up to reveal huge mechanical arms carrying a Pirate fighter craft out into launch position. Scan said it was a rush repair-and-relaunch job from something sustained in the battle outside. That could work.

Samus focused her attention for a moment back on the mass of Pirate troops on the other side of her cover and noticed that there was not much return fire happening at the moment. That meant it was time to move. Above, the Pirate fighter-ship's engines hummed up into ignition as the mechanical arms withdrew from it. Samus raced forward and jumped up, suit jets blasting to double the apex of her leap. She bounced off the hanger wall and leapt back again, thrusting out her left arm as the grapple beam deployed from the back of her hand. It attached to the fighter belly with a crackle of blue energy even as the engines roared to life in launch. Her speed added with the ship's carried her up and over in a tight swing, suit magnetics latching down on the top of the hull even as her grapple stretched and broke.

The ship burst forward out of the hanger, and Samus turned back at her attackers down on the deck, wearing a cocky grin. Then her smile slipped. Now that she could see them all at once, she recognized that there was a reason this maneuver of hers had been so easy. Most of the pirates were not shooting. True, some individuals and teams were unloading in her direction with futile desperation but squad after squad were simply standing there in the hanger and watching her go. Now that she thought of it she wasn't sure they had ever fired on her. Then the Pirate fighter carried her out into space beyond sight. The uneasy feeling in her stomach grew.

That feeling was not helped by the fact that someone had clued in the pilot of her ride to the fact that he had a very hostile barnacle attached to his hull. Samus could look down into the cockpit where the Pirate thrashed at his controls and sent the fighter into a chaotic mess of spins and rolls, desperate to fling her off his ship. That was annoying. Samus tapped her temple and the suit scans proceeded to disable some of his flight controls. Fortunately, whoever had been upgrading that Command Ship's software hadn't gotten to the fighters yet and the Chozo suit still smashed through these systems. Samus even got access to battle telemetry, though the news there was less good.

The Diomedes was a long way off. Evidently they'd made good advantage of the damage Samus had managed to do to the Pirate command ship's engines and had pulled away from the pursuit to actually near rounding the planet's horizon. The remaining GF fighters were pulling back too, though there was still a good amount of combat happening in the intervening space. In fact, as Samus' unwilling ride twirled and swerved through the black, she saw another briefly nearby pirate fighter that was still making a direct bee line towards the Diomedes, a path that cut deep down towards the planet's atmosphere. Another opportunity.

It was tricky timing but the suit handled the calculations. The virtual mark in space approached, then Samus jumped free of her frantic fighter and sailed through space on a high speed intercept course to this new ride. She just barely got within grapple range but managed to draw herself in as it continued to accelerate on towards the Federation ship. She was heading back into the fight.

With this ship's current orientation the planet hung above her, close enough to blot out half of space. White storms and white ice mixed with brownish green land and a few equatorial oceans. For the first time since arriving in this system Samus directed her suit to scan to place, to learn something about J-4M other than the fact that the Chozo had been there once and the humans were there now. Atmospheric data and a Federation data entry popped up and started scrolling for a second. Then those entries blinked and abruptly disappeared. They were replaced by a single word of text displayed across Samus' visor.

"Welcome"

That was decidedly ominous.

Then the Pirate fighter under her feet shook and the planet began spinning around her. Samus looked to the side with disbelieving exasperation at the hole some GF fighter had just shot through her ride. She really wished ships would stop getting shot out from under her. This was becoming a serious problem and the planet rapidly becoming much bigger was an even more serious one.

The Pirate pilot's distress was very briefly increased as a sudden blast ripped his cockpit canopy off and an orange gauntlet reached in to rip him out of his seat before hurling him out into space. Samus swung into the newly vacuum-filled interior and set about trying to wrangle things into order as the suit patched into the ship computers. Unfortunately, what the ship computers told her was that core containment had been breached and the main reactor was a few seconds away from exploding. These Space Pirate constructs really weren't built to last. Samus spun the ship around to face away from the planet and set the engines for full bone-crushing burn, cutting speed as she prayed that the antimatter containment was failing more in the direction of five seconds rather than two. Faint orange flames began to lick around the edges of the shattered cockpit as they plummeted into the atmosphere.

Samus managed to fling herself out of the ship right as her suit said that it was now more improbable that the ship had not already exploded. The quickly following flash still thudded against her personal shields but at least she'd managed to get behind it so the explosion bled off a little more of her orbital velocity. That was nice. However, that meant that she was still left hurtling toward the planet's surface with reentry flames burning through her fingers. She was all out of ships.

Well, this was the first time she'd experienced free-fall reentry. It was actually rather pretty though likely to be fatal. She was above the planet's northern hemisphere where the massive polar ice caps eventually gave up against an expansive barren mountain range whose southern slopes were marked with dark lines, branching and joining as they led down to the equatorial lowlands that actually supported life. There was now a dim haze of panicked radio messages drifting up from the surface as the populated area rotated into view. A little blue icon blinked on near the horizon and slowly moved into Samus' view as the suit told her the human colony actually lay perfectly at the end of her uncontrolled descent.

Somehow that did more to add to the sinking sensation in Samus' stomach than the hurtling fall to her probable death. She'd made no effort to aim her trajectory and yet out of an entire planet she was aimed directly at the one place she could possibly want to go. There had been a few times in her life when she'd felt the touch of something like fate. She never liked it. Her second family had taught her that probability and chance was a mind of its own, the gestalt of all matter and thought in the universe. That it could have a will and a direction like all other things; a music to existence. But they had also taught her how to survive and right now that had to be her chief concern.

The friction flames around her suit had now increased to the point that they were interfering with her organic vision. Samus briefly flipped feet first, fired her widely insufficient suit jets, then returned to the flat limbs-spread aerobraking position as she waiting for them to recharge. Over the nineteen minutes until impact she would have to repeat this two hundred and twenty eight times to of bleed off every last scrap of velocity that she could hope for. Unfortunately, the suit told her exactly how much she could hope for in the distance provided. She would hit the ground at five hundred and thirty eight miles per hour at a sixty degree angle. The visor displayed those particular numbers in red.

Absolute surety of death was oddly familiar. She'd made peace with death so many times before. The first had been when she was six years old. Her second family had saved her then. They had saved her body and then they had saved her mind. They taught her their view of existence; that nothing ever ended. Death might come at anytime but the discrete self was an illusion, just as the discrete now was an illusion. When Samus died she would not be gone. All the times she had been alive would always still exist. Every memory was still alive, and every future she had ever imagined was just as populated as when she first envisioned it. They were all equally true in their own way. The old lesson always helped in these times. It was designed to lead her to peace and to union with all the other minds that had ever roamed this universe.

However, Samus was nagged with a bit of guilt as she fell to her death, alternating suit jets and spreading against the bone rattling wind. This time she mostly just felt bored. She'd died too many times before. The ground was approaching. Outside her suit the wind was screaming.

Red alerts flashed across her visor as the suit gave up on organic reaction times and prepared for its worst case scenario. The mountains rose up below, now actually visible in relief. The suit glowed and hummed as it readied all remaining shields and any possible bits of matter that could be converted into energy to soften this impact. The mechanisms curled her into a ball as barriers shimmered into temporary existence around her. In the rapidly approaching distance Samus briefly saw a light glint off glass or metal down amid the dust. She supposed that was the human colony. The buildings sat at the mouth of a network of canyons or riverbeds that stretched up to the end of her projected path.

Then Samus saw the mountain Nakamura had shown her, looming high above that little human settlement. She saw the giant statue of an unknown seated Chozo carved out of its side. As she fell, the outstretched hand almost seemed like it was pointed at her. She smiled as the suit screamed warnings and alarms. She liked that.

Then she hit the ground.

...​

 

[Cuofeng]

Chapter 5: Blue Birds

…​

Samus couldn't breathe. Then she shoved the stuffed bear a little more to the side so it wasn't squeezed against her stomach anymore and she had more room under the bed. She pressed her fingers against her mouth as she tried to stifle her giggles. The corner of a purple bedspread hung down over the side so the young girl had two trapezoidal windows to look out from her secret hiding spot. The giggles returned as a pair of shoes stepped through the door and stopped.

"Samus, I don't have time for this right now. You need to brush your hair before your lesson and you're already almost late."

At this Samus could no longer restrain the noise and a brief snort of laughter burst out. At once there was a heavy sigh and a hand reached down to grab an edge of the blue patterned blanket that Samus had taken great pains to spread out under her bed prior to executing this plan. However, now that precaution seemed to have doomed her as a tug on the sheet corner sent her legs sliding out to be exposed to her mother's reproachful face.

"No, mom, no fair!" Samus yelled from half under the bed as she tried to wiggle her little legs back under their hiding place.

"Out right now, missy, or I pull you by your ankles. I imagine you'll get a nasty bonk but that'd be your fault wouldn't it? Come on, up."

Reluctantly, Samus pushed her way out from under the bed, pulling her t-shirt back down over her belly while treating her mother to the best face of rebellious dissatisfaction a six-year-old could muster.

Her mother did not seem to be impressed. Her brownish blonde hair was tied up in a ponytail and her work device was in her hand vainly blinking out text to an audience that was currently dealing with an excessively wiggly daughter. "Up up up. You know it starts at one thirty. Do you have your stuff in your backpack?"

"Yeah." Samus grumbled in a vaguely ground-ward direction. Her little pack was over in the corner, stuffed with a colorful folder of loose papers and a plastic recorder instrument that poked out through the zipper. The backpack had a picture of a bird on it. It was blue.

Her mother was glancing at the screen in her hand, trying to figure out whatever she had been looking at before her daughter decided to institute guerrilla warfare against music lessons. "Thank you. Now, your hair? Go brush so you don't keep Mister Alvarez waiting."

Samus stomped over to her bathroom and attacked her shoulder-length blonde hair with the brush for a few fierce swipes until it quickly became obvious that the display was hurting her far more than anyone else. No one was watching her defiance.

Hair tamed and backpack wrangled Samus stepped out into the empty front hallway and glanced around uncertainly. "Mom?"

"I'll be there in just a second," her mother called from the other end of the house, having jumped onto some other activity already.

Samus muttered to herself on the general topic of parents complaining to her about not being ready and then always finding something else to do at the last minute. She lightly kicked her foot against the little emergency breathers box set in the wall by the front door.

Then her mother came bustling back, the screen now stowed somewhere and a tired smile on her face. "All right, we can go. Got your backpack? Your practice sheets?"

"Uh huh." Samus crossed her arms in a show of exasperation. "Is dad coming home for lunch today?"

Her mother tapped the panel beside the door and it slid open easily. She followed Samus outside as she answered, "He'll be back by the time you're done with your lesson. We'll have the rest of that stir fry from Friday, ok?" Then out on the sidewalk she leaned down to give Samus a hug. "Have a good time, honey."

Samus squirmed slightly as bits of her mother's hair got in her face. "Mom. You don't need to watch me. I can go by myself." Really, it was only a block and a half. She could see Mister Alvarez's door already from here.

"Maybe not, but I want to. Now go on."

Samus turned and started off down the sidewalk, waving vaguely behind her. It was embarrassing. Luís already took the trolly line two whole stops by himself to get over here and he was only a year older than her, but Samus had her mother standing on the street-side watching her walk along as if she'd manage to get lost in sixty yards. But soon enough Samus forgot to be irritated and instead glanced up at the muted sky above. It was actually bright today and the sun shone down as a slightly diffuse orb above the transparent flexible dome that covered her neighborhood of the colony city. The shadow of one of the dome support struts crossed the sidewalk and Samus hopped into one of the little triangle gaps in it to avoid touching the dark as she passed.

Then she reached Mister Alvarez's door and reached up on her toes to tap the standard panel beside it. The door slid open and she could hear Mister Alvarez laying out homework for the kid before her. Samus thought her name was Kay.


It was twenty minutes into the music lesson when the alarms went off. Mister Alvarez jerked back in his fluffy stuffed armchair and stood up as quickly as he could but he told Samus to stay in her chair and keep practicing the finger positions for the next song. He told her the alarm would probably stop in a moment. But Samus watched him hurriedly shuffle over to one of the computer stations and peer at the information it was flashing out. He looked back at Samus and told her everything was fine, they just had to stay inside for a moment until the all clear notice sounded. Samus slowly put down her recorder. Mister Alvarez had white hair but he hadn't learned to lie very well.

Samus felt something rumble under her chair. She jumped down so she could have her feet on the floor. She'd only felt it for a moment but it had been like when they were doing construction nearby; a big whump against the earth. Mister Alvarez told her that everything was going to be ok and to get back into her chair, but his voice was getting louder and he was breathing heavily. He was lying. Samus ran over to his couch and climbed up to look out the window behind it.

At first everything looked normal. It was just her street and her town, with the sun shining up outside the dome. Then she saw a distant streak of fire trail down from the sky and land out beyond the rocky hills around the city. Her heart began to pound. Someone had crashed. That was a ship falling. Her eyes squinted and focused. There were other shapes in the sky, other lights flashing and swerving. Then all the building sides across the street from her window suddenly flashed brighter than looking at the sun. An instant later the ground jumped and shook with a terrible boom.

Samus screamed and Mister Alvarez's soft but bony hand grabbed her arm and pulled her back from the window. He was yelling at her to get into the center of the house but she was crying and she didn't know what was happening. The emergency box by his front door was open and he was trying to get the clear breathing mask on over her head. Somewhere in the quiet behind Samus' eyes a little voice of hers was saying that he was doing it wrong. Grown ups were supposed to put on their mask first and then help her if she hadn't gotten hers on yet. Missus Yang had told them that. There'd been pictures. It had been a panda bear showing them what to do.

The ground shook again and everything in the house rattled. The alarms were still blaring, but somehow that last shaking had resettled something in Samus' mind. She wasn't screaming anymore and she couldn't tell if she was still crying. The mask meant she couldn't touch her cheeks to check. Mister Alvarez leaned in the corner, clutching a screen as he held it very close to his face, muttering wordlessly to himself as the blood drained from his face with each word he read. Samus took one last look at him and then bolted for the front door.

Mister Alvarez screamed after her but Samus could feel that her own fear had retreated for a minute. She was thinking more clearly even as her throat hurt with worry. If an emergency happened you were supposed to stay in place. But if a big emergency happened the important thing was making sure her parents found her. Her mom and dad were both back at home, so if she ran back they would be able to stay in place instead of coming after her. Two people staying in place instead of just one. She jumped up to slap the door panel and Mister Alvarez' front door slid open.

Outside it was windy. Samus kept running but she didn't understand that. Inside the colony it was only windy in certain places, near where the air systems were. But she reflexively squinted her eyes against dust that whipped her bare legs even as it pattered off her clear breathing hood. A bit of hair was in her mouth but she couldn't reach it inside the hood so she just tried to spit it out as she ran. All the sounds were dulled and muted but the sound of her breathing. Then a shadow covered the street and she stopped. She was alone out here and she looked up. A huge ship hovered outside, up over the dome. It was black and it hid the sun. Then objects began dropping down from it, straight through the top of dome.

It only took a moment before the wind began to shift. It intensified and the sound of it beating against her breathing hood was all Samus could hear. The dome was ripped and it felt like the world was screaming. No, that was ok. Missus Yang had told her how to deal with that. She already had her hood on. All the houses could seal themselves and had their own air lines and even then it would take a while to empty the whole dome even through a big rip. They could fix rips. She just had to get home and she was almost there. Then Samus realized that she was still standing motionless on the sidewalk.

She turned and continued running even as the ground shook again. There was flickering orange light in the distance, like fire. Then a screeching sound was drawing nearer and Samus looked up to see a long ship the size of a house pass over head, inside the dome. It was black and purple and as she watched it slowed to a hover a few blocks away. Dark shapes dropped down from it. They were shaped almost like people.

Samus ran down the empty sidewalk, feet pounding as hard as her chest with each desperate breath she drew. It was only thirty yards, then twelve, then she was there and she threw herself against her door but it wouldn't open when she hit the panel and she was stuck outside and she kept hitting the panel and it wasn't working and the wind was roaring all around her and she was so scared. Then the door opened. Strong arms pulled her inside and Samus screamed at the faceless mirror that clutched her. Then the moment passed and she recognized her mother with sunlight reflecting off her own breathing hood.

"Samus! What are you...?! How...?!" Then her mother gave up on speaking and just pulled her in for a hug so tight it made Samus' bones hurt. She never wanted it to end.

"Samus?!" Her father's voice boomed through the house, higher pitched than she had ever heard it from stress and worry. "I thought she was over with Ricardo?! Why was she outside?!"

"I don't know!" Her mother screamed back, hurting Samus' ears as her face was squeezed against her mother's chest, the plastic breathing hood smooshing uncomfortably against her cheek. Then her mother pulled her back a bit and looked down, her eyes wide with panic even as she spoke reassuringly at a breathless pace. "Are you ok? Are you ok, honey? It's ok. Everything's going to be alright. You're safe. You're safe." She looked back at her husband. "She hasn't said anything. What do we do now? Where do we go?"

Samus' father was pacing back and forth. His hand went up to rub his brow and was thwarted by his own breathing hood. He punched out at the wall and Samus winced. He saw that smallest of gestures and suddenly went very still for an instant as all his muscles tensed and released. He was very tall and his blue full-body mechanic's uniform almost made the hood seem like a normal part of his outfit. His eyes were blue too.

"All right," he said, now calm and in control. There was still a tremble in his voice. "City Hall still says to stay in place but we're right at the southeast corner of the dome. The tunnel to Central over there's through living rock, we actually have a chance of holding that. The defense force will be deploying from that direction, anyway. We'll make it inside and then to Central or one of the reinforced underground facilitates. The Pirates will just be grabbing what they can on the surface before Federation forces show up so they won't bother us in the secure places."

Samus' mother grabbed her daughter's shoulders. "Samus? Ok, honey? We're going to be going outside and I want you to hold onto me for every second. We're going over to the A-2 tunnel, remember that? And if you lose sight of me for any reason I want you to keep going there, and keep going inside until you see a police officer and go where they point you. Ok? Got that? We're all going together and we will follow you, ok?"

Samus could hear fear in her mother's voice and it made her chest hurt. She nodded. In a very small voice she said, "I left my backpack at Mister Alvarez's."

Her mother wasn't looking at her anymore. She was moving towards the rear door and her grip on Samus' forearm was so strong that it hurt. "That's ok, honey. Now we're going to be going fast so get ready." She looked over at her husband who had vanished into the other room for a brief second before returning. "What are you grabbing?"

"My toolbag. Could be important. I threw some of your necklaces in too. I didn't know-"

"Don't worry about that! We have to go now!"

"Mom? What about Mister Alvarez? And my friend Luís? Do we need to call them and tell them? Do they know where to go?"

Her mother still wasn't looking at her. She was just pressed against the rear door, moving back and forth to look out the narrow viewport. "It's ok, you don't need to worry about them. Everything will be fine. Now be ready to move with me. Ok? Stay with me."

The door opened and her parents hurried her out into the wind and blowing dust. Everything looked the same, but very different. The streets weren't empty anymore. There were other people out, running. Some of them didn't even have their hoods on and held arms up over their mouths as they staggered in the thinning air. It was cold out here.

Her father lead the way and her mother kept a tight grip on her wrist. Samus tried to grab back and return the hold but the angle was wrong for her hand to bend and the cold air stung her palm. So she clenched her fingers into a fist. Something was on fire and the grey smoke blew sideways to fill the intersection a block down the road. They were running past it.

There was a sound like fireworks and something bright flew out of the smoke. There were a bunch of them, like blinding streaks, and they hit the side of a building with cracks that hurt her ears even through the hood. Her father yelled but Samus could only hear her own heartbeat. Then a tall dark shape stepped out of the smoke and dust at the other end of the street.

It was like a person in armor, but bigger, made of spikes and blades and claws. And it was wrong. It was shaped wrong. Then it threw back its head and a horrible chittering scream rang out against the wind. New black shapes appeared, crawling up over the houses and roofs. They raised their arms, there were flashes and something behind Samus exploded.

A slam hit Samus' chest as her mother's arm thrust against her hard enough to knock out her breath. Samus sailed back, thrown by a mother's desperate action. She landed on the sidewalk and pain shot through her as her head bounded off the pavement with a sickening clunk. Her shirt sleeve was ripped on the cement along with the skin of her elbow. She gasped repeatedly as she wobbled to stand up, in too much pain to cry. Her ears were ringing.

"Samus! Run!" Her mother was screaming.

Samus turned back and saw that the front of a building had fallen down. It was broken and her mother was lying down on the ground at the edge of the rubble only a few feet away. There was something heavy lying on her legs. Samus' father was trying to to lift it.

"Mom!"

"Samus!" Her mother's eyes locked onto her with such a fierce desperation that Samus couldn't breath. "Samus, run! You remember the plan! Run, now! Run!"

Her father was straining, trembling as his strong arms and legs still failed to lift the rubble. The side of his blue jumpsuit was stained with red streaks. Samus didn't know what to do. The dark and spiky shapes were getting closer.

Her mother screamed. "Run!"

Samus turned and ran. Her eyes were fixed on the sidewalk as she ran as fast as she could ever remember. She was still dizzy. Her lungs pounded, her throat burned, and her head still rang like it was stuffed with cotton. A swift shadow passed over the street. It was like the wing of a bird. A bird larger than any she had ever seen. Then an inhuman screech blasted from behind her. Samus still ran.

She dashed around a corner and saw her family's chosen escape path. It was burning. Vehicle wreckage was strewn across the tunnel mouth, blocking it. Samus saw people lying down over to the side, people in police uniforms. They weren't moving. She realized that she'd stopped running. She stumbled forward and back forth. She didn't know what to do. She turned back the way she'd came, begging to see her mom and dad running out to pick her up.

Instead, she saw huge shape crawling up a three story building a few blocks away. The thing reached the top and settled into a perch as it surveyed the smoking city. Huge bat-like wings flexed, partially furled against its back. A long neck snaked up to a huge reptilian head of teeth and its thin barbed tail trailed down beside its feet. It was holding something in its clawed hand. At this distance it looked like a doll. The doll was flailing and struggling. It was wearing a blue uniform.

Then the monster lifted up its hand and took a bite.

Samus ran. The edge of the dome was right here, the thick flexible material almost fully transparent. It was covered with small holes and rips, rips that were slowly spreading as the higher pressure air of the colony kept flowing out. Samus didn't remember even touching it, but then she was outside the dome. Dust and gravel shifted under her feet. It was so cold.

She'd been on trips out of the colony before, once for safety training and once with her class. They'd ridden in a bus for fifteen minutes to go look at a waterfall. The teacher had talked about terraforming. But they'd always made the kids wear atmosphere suits. She didn't have that now, only the emergency hood. Her fingers hurt so badly, every bit of her skin was burning with cold. Then she tripped as she tried to run up the rough and broken stone of a low hill. Her hands were bloody but they didn't hurt any worse than they had before.

She didn't know why she was running. Her head was ringing and she couldn't think. She couldn't scream. Every breath came in in rough and ragged gulps as her chest heaved in and out. Then she fell again. Her legs weren't working right. She was so tired. She got up and ran again down the other side of the hill, but her ankle was weak under her and she stumbled, half spinning as she struggled to stay upright. She could just see the top of the city dome over the hill. The huge black ship was hovering over it as smaller craft swarmed like a cloud of flies. Then she turned away and ran again, into the burning cold and the pain.

Finally, past empty roads and rough hills, Samus reached the point where she couldn't run anymore. She couldn't feel anything in her limbs other than a distant and tingling pain. Her legs were too weak, they wouldn't lift when she told them too. The little indicator on her hood was orange now. It was supposed to be green. Samus fell down. The rocks were rough and so cold. They poked her bones. She couldn't stand up. She couldn't think. She just lay there, chest heaving as the orange indicator on the hood slowly darkened into red. She looked back into the distance and watched the dark ships above the dome come back together and together rose up into the sky. Then they were gone. They left behind only smoke. Smoke drifting up to make clouds.

Time didn't pass. Samus couldn't think enough for it to. The only thought she had was when she realized that she was dying. She wondered what that was like.

A shadow fell over her. Samus saw the shadow and it meant nothing. Then there was another shadow beside it and it meant nothing too. They were tall. They wore long robes. There was a face with a beak. Like a bird. Samus liked birds. She couldn't breath.

Then two huge hands reached down to scoop up the small child and held her cradled between them. The child's eyes closed.

...​

Samus woke up looking at the dark blue sky of J4M. Her vision was blurry and spotted until her eyes refocused and she realized that her helmet visor was coated with dust. She lay on her back, finding safety in her suit's embrace.

So, she was alive.

Data blinked across her visor. It corrected her to indicate that she was in fact barely alive. She'd been unconscious for eleven hours as the suit tried to repair the damage to itself and her. Samus' bones were reinforced beyond breaking but even the flexible structural lattice infused throughout her entire body had only been just enough to prevent her organs from being reduced to liquid from that deorbiting impact. Medical nanites had been at work in her brain, ameliorating the massive trauma, while the suit took over most of her blood processing from her involuntarily detached lungs, liver, and gut. Even so it had been close.

The suit did not have many resources left to work with. The list of missing hardware systems, all cannibalized by direct energy conversion to soften the impact, was still scrolling past Samus' eyes. Correction, to soften the impacts. Apparently, she'd hit the ground six times. Primary impact, blasted through the top of a hill, bounced off flat ground, hit a canyon wall, hit another canyon wall, then landed here. Samus now noticed that her view of the sky was bounded in one direction by rock. Oh, she was in a canyon. She turned her head and saw a precipitous drop. Halfway down the wall of a canyon. Her left hand hung out over air.

A warning message flashed in front of her eyes as Samus slowly sat up, the Chozo text advising against moving more than absolutely necessary. It would be another nineteen hours before the biological repairs were completely finished. Samus, gestured with her free hand, accessing the menus to reduce the anesthetic delivery. She immediately experienced a measure of regret but it was necessary. She needed to be sharp.

The damage to the suit was visually obvious. The bulging shoulder mounted Varia components were gone, as were all her booster jets, and her arm cannon was now at least ten percent slimmer. The suit shield generators were basically nonexistent. Everything had been reabsorbed to keep her alive through that one moment. She was as weak a newborn baby. Well, a newborn baby still strapped into the most advanced suit of power armor ever created in this galaxy, even in its current reduced state.

Samus sighed, and then once again regretted reducing the anesthetic. Time to get to work. She'd repaired the suit before. Many times before. Chozo wartech was sturdy. It just needed ingredients. Certain rare elements it was unable to synthesize for some specialized systems, and for the rest just power. Lots of power. She could do that.

She then realized that she had been sitting here on this bit of dusty rock for several minutes without processing a single thing about her surroundings. That sort of thing got people killed. Maybe she'd overestimated the extent to which her brain damage had been repaired.

She was lying on a rock ledge three-quarters of the way down the sun bathed wall of a deep canyon. In fact it was exceptionally deep for how narrow it was, the rim was several hundred feet above her. The suit scan revealed that while most of the planet's land at these latitudes was barren of all life but a type of lichen-analogue, these canyons preserved inside them a denser and warmer atmosphere. That certainly explained why the floor down below was almost pure dark green.

Samus grabbed hold of the edge of the rock ledge with her left hand and lowered herself down as far as that took her. The human colony was connected to this same canyon network, she'd seen it as she fell. She descended the cliff face, kicking new footholds in the rock when geology didn't comply, and tried to avoid the wall-clinging vines that grew more numerous and thicker the lower she got. The vegetation was dark here, the thin needlelike leaves almost black with pigment. They needed every bit sunlight and heat they could get here, day couldn't last long at the bottom of of a narrow canyon.

Then Samus reached the end of her climb and dropped the last thirty feet to the dirt packed floor. The canyon was only about twenty feet across by this point, and there was a little strip of sand in the very middle, probably an intermittent stream. The native plants were fairly dense here, but still Samus found a narrow path near the far wall that made for easy walking. It was some sort of track, although made by what type of creature she didn't know. In any case it would serve her now, and lead her downstream to the mouth of this canyon. She began to walk faster. She'd noticed that she was not receiving any transmissions from the colony anymore, nor from Diomedes above. It was possible that she was simply shielded by the geology here but she was still very nervous. Garbled Pirate transmissions drifting straight down indicated that the splinter fleet still had an orbital presence to some degree. It was possible that the fight was still ongoing. She hoped so.

Walking gave her time to think and so her left hand worked in air, accessing virtual menus as Samus attempted to get the suit systems to load up what they could of Adam's personality. There was anesthetic in her brain, she needed a second voice to help help her plan. However, nearly instantly a message flashed in front of her eyes, "Integration Failed". Too many of Adam's core thought programs were missing even if most of his memory was safe. Samus breathed out. There were backups back on Diomedes of course, but not down here. Still, she set the suit to use some spare cycles attempting to grow an integration framework for Adam off in a virtual partition. She missed his silence too.

Leaves rustled and Samus' right arm snapped up to target the noise. Edging sideways, she tapped her temple, remembered that all her advanced vision modes had been cannibalized, and then knelt down to peer under the shivering bush. There was a small creature frozen back there, its round back covered with thin feather-like quills and its four eyes were wide and black. Scan said it was a common herbivore native to the planet's northern canyonlands; not endangered at all. It watched Samus, not daring to move but ready to sprint if she moved any closer. Samus' shield energy indicator quietly blinked red in the corner of her vision, reminding her of her dire straits.

She sighed and her power beam fired once. The shield meter ticked up slightly as a little limp form bounced off the far stone wall. She was here to protect thousands of sapient colonists from a Space Pirate attack that could still be under way. She needed every resource. Samus stood up and walked down the narrow path in the direction of the colony city.

After a few minutes she rounded a bend and, pushing past a small twisted tree, she saw that up above her the canyon briefly closed in a massive stone arch. The suit scan suggested that most of these canyons were originally ancient lava tubes from the volcanic mountain range nearby. This planet clearly had a very energetic past. In any case Samus now walked in the shade.

Then she emerged into the sunlight on the far side of the arch and almost kicked the back of a standing stone slab. It was polished, rectangular and clearly sapient made. Samus walked around it and looked down at words carved in neat Human Standard.

"Whistle Canyon Nature Park: Please stay on the trail"

She now felt a slight bit more guilty about the little creature. Well, it wasn't the first time Samus had been a poacher. Still, it didn't help that a little speaker by the sign for some reason misinterpreted her power suit's signature as a third grade class trip and was now cooing a recorded message about the water cycle and the importance of conserving local wildlife. Samus moved on, towards the simple metal wall stood across the canyon mouth a few yards beyond. The door in the middle had a simple low energy barrier across it, just enough to discourage any local wildlife from clawing at it. A little tap panel sat in the wall beside it, allowing any locals easy access back and forth.

Samus shot the door.

It sprang open with an electric squeal of protest as the energy field broke. Strictly speaking she could have just tapped the access pad with her finger or the touched door itself to let the suit scan do the rest but shooting also worked. She liked when shooting worked.

Then Samus stepped through the door onto a wide shelf occupied by a small paved parking lot as on each side the canyon walls raced apart into the distance. Below her lay the sprawling white and blue buildings of the colony city nestled in a wide valley. A few strands of smoke rose from the far distant edge but that was the only motion. The city was silent. Her suit scan picked up no free radio transmissions. No vehicles moved in the streets. As Samus' breath caught in the terrible stillness, even the orbital Pirate transmissions faded off the spectrum, hidden as they fell behind the planet. There was only silence and the distant sound of reverberating wind in the canyons like faint and sorrowful music.

Suddenly a new transmission alert appeared on her visor. A distant human signal emerged from the planet horizon and slowly pierced through the atmospheric static.

"...is GFS Diomedes. to Colony J-4M. We've completed another orbit and are back in range. Continue Aurora, what's going on down there? Report!"

...​

 

[Cuofeng]

Chapter 6: Silent Streets

...​

Samus stood at the edge of a parking lot carved into the side of the canyon wall, looking down at the silent colony city that spread out in the wide valley before her. The valley was a nexus below where three particularly large canyons met, all leading down from the general northern direction of the preposterously tall mountain that loomed in the distance. Through the thin, clear air Samus could clearly see the massive statue of the Chozo carved into that rocky cliffside staring down at her and the entire human city below her. On three sides of the city the valley's steep natural walls shot up to the high altitude volcanic tablelands above, while to the south the depression spread and widened out into the hazy distance of the lower and warmer south. Well, warmer in a relative sense for the standards of this planet.

The glass-studded buildings that characterized human habitation filled this end of the valley. For such a new colony it was an impressively large city. Samus just wished she could see a single sign of life moving down in the streets below.

The radio transmission crackled and Nakamura's voice continued to broadcast down from orbit. "Aurora, report."

Samus steeled her sinking stomach with practiced tensing as she readied for the continued silence. Then a jolt of surprise raced through her core as another transmission clicked onto the spectrum. "Aurora-926 reporting."

A breath of wind pushed past Samus as her head snapped around look up the valley. The signal was tight banded, aimed for space, and encrypted but the suit narrowed in on its origin in under a second. Far across the city at the mouth of one of the three large branching canyons there was a hulking white building, massive by the standards of this colony. It was part of a larger sprawling complex of linked multistory buildings and now as Samus focused the suit's resources she could detect a faint radiation signature of an active shield around some of it. The fight wasn't over. There were still forces resisting the Pirates' advance.

The colony's supervising computer mind continued its transmission, layering vocals over continuous data transmissions. With a faintly feminine voice it said, "Understood, Diomedes. The facility is secure. The land-bound hostiles made another attempted assault but continue to be stymied by the deployment of my emergency countermeasures. Five thousand of my charges remain secure within the facility."

Samus' left hand clenched at her side. Five thousand survivors accounted for. This colony's registry entry listed eleven thousand. Those were horrific casualties but exactly how bad the situation truly was she couldn't know. The Aurora unit and Nakamura both knew that if there were Pirates on the planet they could possibly be listening on this call just like Samus was. Then she felt the smallest trill of hope. Some of this could be false intelligence. There could be more survivors holed up somewhere less protected but more hidden. Aurora could be concealing their location. Samus had to hope that was so.

"Understood, Aurora." Nakamura sounded tired. "Hold position and protect those that remain with you. Our counterassault is delayed by repairs but the enemy has the same concerns. Orbital standoff persists. Next contact at code alpha four two nine. Diomedes out."

Samus tilted her head up as she looked through her visor past the thin wisps of clouds towards the unseen black of space. Directly above her, the optical effect of the sky faded from blue into a circle of deep purple. The atmosphere was thin, even here inside the canyons. On an Earth-standard planet this air pressure would be found at approximately twelve thousand feet. Outside her suit the wind was cold.

All the Federation forces had to assume that she was dead or captured onboard the Pirate Command ship since that was her last known location. Even if her suit had been able to punch a signal up to Diomedes in its current state she would not. There was no reason to give up the possibility of a surprise attack against the land-bound Pirate forces. The corner of her lips twitched up. In fact, she did the strike right then she could get several surprise attacks. The dead rarely reported back on who killed them.

The Aurora Unit's facility was the first place to search. The biocomputer had mentioned recently repelling an attack so there were likely to be Pirate forces still in the area. Even if there weren't she needed to make contact with the Federation and let them know she was still alive. They could fill her in on what happened during those eleven hours she had been unconscious.

Samus took off down the road from the Park trailhead's perch that cut through the red and black volcanic stone of the valley wall. She moved at as fast of a jog as she could manage without impeding her body's continued healing. It only took her two minutes to make it down the canyon wall to the highest edge of the valley floor where the city began. Still there was no sign of life in between the habitation buildings and work facilities, just scraps of litter and fine grey dust blowing in the breeze. Samus continued down the streets, passing shop windows and delivery vehicles parked here and there. The wind moaned faintly as it caught against the corner of a multistory apartment complex.

There was clear evidence of a hurried evacuation. Broken doors, shattered windows, dropped valuables on the sidewalk, left from when a placid civilian populace was suddenly faced with pure terror for the first time in their lives. Aurora's report had suggested massive casualties but at least in this area of the city Samus could see no evidence of that.

That is not to say that she saw nothing. She passed the corpse of a woman lying crumpled at the bottom of a stairwell. Scan said she had fractured her skull. Deeper in the city a man's body lay in the street, chest blackened and burnt along with the few scattered blaster scars on the building behind him. But these were the exception more than the rule and that gave Samus hope. She had seen no sign of the colony's emergency shelters but that meant the Pirates might not have found them either.

The greater mystery was what the Pirates down here on the surface were actually doing. They were presumably trapped on the planet until Diomedes and the splinter fleet worked out who held orbital dominance. Any Pirate transport would be defenseless to Diomedes if the larger ship came around for another orbit while they were still rising up out of the atmosphere. But by the same token, if the Federation had not already landed ground forces then they were not likely able to now, not after the Pirates had been given all these hours to build up anti-air defenses.

Now in the depths of the colony Samus glimpsed far off shadows when once she passed a particularly long and straight boulevard. An armed Pirate lander craft floated across that road, just barely a few yards above the pavement and well below the skyline. Then in a second the ship was hidden again, vanished into the buildings of the colony. They hadn't seen her. Those Pirates didn't act like they had military superiority here on the planet. They were being very cautious. Samus didn't know why and that made her very uneasy.

A computer device lay where it had fallen out of someone's fleeing hand onto the sidewalk. Samus bent down to pick it up and read the message that still glowed across the partially broken screen. "Evacuation Alert: Proceed to your districts designated shelter. Reminder: Your shelter is located where the sacred Chozo ignores."

Samus frowned at the little rectangle before raising one eyebrow in mild respect. That last message was clearly leveraging local shared experience as an encryption code. Clever, easy for the residents to understand and nearly uncrackable for a foreign force. One point to Aurora-926. It also meant that Samus was right. There were multiple shelters and some might still be safe. The corner of Samus's visor blinked that all the devices relevant data had been downloaded so she let it fall from her hand as she moved on. It shattered on the cement at her feet.

A few blocks away she passed a minor governmental office and on an instinct lightly punched through the reinforced glass. She walk in through the compromised window and set her suit scan to rip into the main public information database. That at least gave her a map of the city. A rectangular outline of a building suddenly glowed as a virtual projection behind the blank interior wall; a local police command center about a block away from her current location. It was a good place to investigate.

A minute later she rounded the end of the block and was once again faced with the reminder of why this colony existed at all. A Chozo statue sat in the middle of an open city square; its dark metal and stone standing out starkly against the glass and concrete of the human colony. Two designs, mutually alien to each other.

Samus' eyes narrowed as she began to feel a building anger at these humans daring to move a statue, for desecrating it and its creators to use as mere ornamentation. Then she got a closer look at its plinth. The way the statue jutted up from a circle punched in the center of the square clearly showed that it had been left in place and the colonists had built around it, honoring the previous residents of this world in their own ignorant way. Samus breathed out and forgot her anger, focusing in her mission once more. Being on this planet was bringing back old habits from her youth.

As she crossed the concrete expanse towards the police headquarters she passed near the statue. A crouched figure of an unarmored Chozo sat in the middle of the plinth, even larger than life, with its hands held out before it as if cradling a precious burden. Those huge hands were empty though the statue's eyes still glowed with a faint orange light. On each side of the statue stood vertical stone slabs, carved with flowing Chozo script and then a circular network of symbols that even Samus didn't recognize.

She casually tapped the temple of her helmet to have the suit scan and retain the text for her to read later but a second later an odd visual glitch jumped across her visor. Samus froze in the middle of her step, however after that one strange instant nothing similar recurred. Everything looked normal, though the suit displays were still complaining about her current dreadfully weakened state.

She turned back towards the statue, narrowing her eyes at its unmoving metal form. The eyes still glowed blankly in the face of a being long dead. Samus knew that her suit had suffered incredible damage in the planetfall. Frankly, it was astonishing that the thing still worked at all and everything considered, a software glitch was perfectly forgivable. However, she knew better. Despite her recent trauma she had not forgotten the strange welcome message that had popped up when her suit scanned this planet for the first time. Her Chozo built technology was reacting to this place, to this secret domain of its makers; this last fortress. This wasn't anything she'd experienced before, even on other Chozo planets. She didn't like it.

But that mystery was forced to take a lower priority to the remaining human lives currently at risk here. Samus turned back around, but not before gesturing two fingers at her eyes and then at the silent statue's. She strode across the concrete expanse towards the tall colony building striped in blue paint and armor plating.

The righthand outbuilding of the police station was in ruins. Samus guessed that it had been the vehicle bay and so had received a quick heavy weapons barrage from the initial Pirate decent. The attackers must have wanted to stop any defense ships from being launched. However, the rest of the station seemed intact enough, including the communications array on the very top. After all the pirates whole plan had centered on knowing there was no one to call for help.

Right now, to Samus' eyes, that array was more valuable than any amount of armaments a tiny local defense force might have had. The front gate was open and a few dropped weapons showed more evidence of a disordered retreat. Grey dust collected in the corners of the enclosed compound yard.

She stepped through the unlocked front doors and an alert flashed in Samus' visor. Her gun twitched up before her mind could read it. But she calmed herself and processed the message. The weird glitches were getting to her; she was becoming afraid of her suit, her own self. Her brow furrowed as she frowned, the painkillers still in her system were dulling her thoughts. That kind of doubt was a quick way to get killed on the battlefield, even quicker if there was actually a reason for that doubt.

"ALERT: upgrade materials detected"

An orange icon blinked through the far wall, indicating something hiding in the near distance behind it, somewhere in the station. Samus walked through the deserted police office, ignoring a lone security scan system beeping futilely as it noticed her armaments. She pushed past desks and waiting areas, walking down an undamaged grey hallway as she searched for the door to the material alert location.

There was no evidence of exchanged blaster fire. The locals had completely abandoned this location without a ground fight. Samus didn't have a full picture yet of what had happened while she was unconscious, but there would have had to have been a damn good reason to desert this building, even with the light damage it had sustained. This should have been a prime Pirate looting target, she thought as she passed a half stocked but unlooted armory. Or the disordered retreat could have been simple panic and incompetence, but all the same Samus' eyes were thin and suspicious as she swept her head from left to right, taking in the signs of hurried evacuation.

Then she casually thew a door open and heard it clunk firmly against metal. Samus blinked as she found herself staring slightly up at a large security robot with a large police shield symbol printed across its armored torso.

It was as loud as it was large. "This area is restricted! Vacate immediately or you will be forcibly restrained!" Then in a split second it alternated to a tone of geniality as its programing switched tracks. "No registration detected. Please, citizen, display your hardcopy registration or accompany me to the nearest station to speak with a human representative."

Samus kept an eye on the security bot's menacing arms and heavy tank treads as she leaned to the side to confirm what she already regretted. The rest of the empty hallway proved it, the detected upgrade materials were inside the robot. Samus sighed. Right now it looked to be in much better repair than she was. Luckily, the robot was confused enough by her suit's scan resistance to not notice the highly visible weapon enveloping her right arm.

"This area is restricted! Vacate at once! If you require assistance with a faulty registration transmitter I can contact a technical aid representative. It is my pleasure to serve."

Samus slowly backed up as the heavy robot rolled after her, both aiming a stun gun with one limb and in the other cheerfully holding out a blinking communication line. Whoever did budgeting for the local police had certainly cheaped out on the AI model here. In fact, now that she could see the whole thing, it actually looked like a repurposed construction robot; just an upright cylinder in treads outfitted with four heavy duty multipurpose arms and not much else. But apparently its power core contained the transuranic alloys that Samus needed right now.

"Comply immediately, or face the consequences! Have a nice day."

Samus' weapon rose in a slow smooth motion at the same time as a security bot arm unfolded to reveal a powerful organic destabilizer. Samus sighed; why could nothing she needed ever just be laying on a table?

A few minutes later, the smoking and sparking security bot bore enough powerbeam impact marks to resemble an abstract art product. The entire first floor of the police station was strewn with debris, pieces of broken cubicle walls, and shattered plastic-wood desks. Black scorch marks covered the sturdier walls. Samus stood over the fallen robot with one foot planted on its ripped metal torso, panting as her weapon remained trained on its now exposed core.

The synthesized voice continued, "Lethal force autho-autho-authorized! Would you like to rate your experience today?"

Samus grunted as she leaned down to rip the necessary component from the chattering wreckage. Her weakened shields and armaments meant she had needed to be a lot more acrobatic in that fight than she might have preferred as the owner of a set of still healing organs. Light glowed around her hand as the Chozo suit began absorb the materials it needed. Then a new alert flashed in her visor; this time mercifully green.

"Charge beam functionality restored"

Well, that was one down.

Following one of the sturdier looking undamaged walls, Samus located a stairwell up to the building's less public offices. Soon she found a secure terminal on the second floor and jabbed her arm at it to gain physical access. Then it was just a matter of waiting a few moments for the Diomedes' orbit to come around again.

Time elapsed and then the signal lanced up, wrapped up in Federation code and Chozo system sorcery that disguised it as the same format as Aurora's last message. It would look like a duplicate message unless the recipient possessed the handshake program Samus had made sure the suit left in Diomedes' computers. No one but that particular ship would know that this was Samus and not another bio-computer message, particularly the Pirate ground forces. In fact, Samus had actually left that ship with a few other instructions in addition to the handshake program.

Contact was established and Diomedes replied with an automatic hail as it rerouted her call. Then a hesitant and confused female voice spoke from the other end.

"Er, this is Officer Yin? Who...how am I even getting an outside call?"

Samus smiled. She'd almost forgotten she'd set this up. The Federation had the nerve to arrest her for saving them from the X-parasite so she was going to be very nice and compliant with the law. And that meant all calls went through her parole officer, even if the Federation in no way wanted them to.

"This is Samus Aran reporting in on my commuted service sentence. Status: damaged but operational after eleven hours unconscious. Hi, Yin."

"Ms Aran?!" Yin's voice came back, astonished. "How...Um, hi to you too?"

The communication line suddenly clicked as Samus' reroute protocol was forcibly overridden. A rather angry voice replaced Yin's disoriented one. Apparently, Commander Nakamura did not appreciate Samus' interpretation of the terms of her sentencing.

"Aran! You're alive?! Why are you talking to some...?!" However, he quickly gained control of himself and became serious again. "You know what, never mind. There's not much time on this orbit. Damn it, you're down in the colony city? Ok, we can use that." He breathed in and out. "Eleven hours, and you've seen nothing. Well, let's catch you up. Aurora-926 is in the central Federation Research Facility and is under intermittent attack from Pirate ground forces. While you're down there, coordinate an offense with 926. Transmitting a hard-wire communication point and a path for you to get there. Acknowledge orders."

Samus snorted slightly at the formality as she leaned back, standing in front of the computer terminal and the blank wall behind its inactive holo display. Once, words like that had been hammered through even her stubborn reflexes, but she hadn't been in the military for decades. Still, Nakamura was a sensible man. And she had a colony to save. She flicked her thumb and the suit transmitted a confirmation signal.

"Acknowledged"

While the audio signal still lasted Samus could hear Nakamura breathing. There was a strain under his attempt at projecting forceful command. Then he sighed. "Repairs to Diomedes are underway. Do what you can on the surface to push back the Pirate forces. Listen to Aurora and we can keep any more valuable technology out of their hands. We'll be back in the fight soon. Until then, happy hunting." The last word vanished into static. The transmission terminated as the ship once more fell beneath the horizon.

True to his word, a new destination marker offered itself in Samus' visor, off in the distance at the head of the valley where the space split into three narrower canyons. The access point was at the edge of that large Research Center complex Samus had seen as soon as she got her first view of the colony. She glanced at the map overlay the suit displayed as she trotted back down the stairs, It would take her about twenty minutes to get there on foot if she didn't run into any hostile patrols on the way. She stepped out through the front doors into the courtyard that was still littered with scattered weapons, armor plates and the fine grey dust that covered almost everything in this city.

A sound whistled across the sky and Samus jerked into motion in the exact same second that her suit flashed a warning in her eyes. She'd heard enough missiles launching in atmosphere to have burned that reflex down into her bones. But as she spun behind cover, raising her gun to find an incoming target, she got a view and relaxed as quickly as she had tensed. Three large-bodied rockets had been gently lobbed up from the far outer edge of the city where the pirate landing party seemed to be concentrating but Samus didn't need the suit's dotted trajectory lines to know that they were going to miss her current position by quite a lot. What she was interested to learn was that the suit was sensing life signs within each of the ballistic canisters.

The Pirates were firing live payloads? Why?

The three crude missiles arced overhead and then fell down to vanish behind the city's skyline. Samus frowned. Those things each landed a bit apart, two in the canyon behind the Research Center complex and one a little deeper in the city on that same side of the colony. There was no sound of any distant detonation, only a return to the unnatural calm. The only sound was the same low tones that the wind played through the canyon mouths. Some sort of commando troop insertion? Maybe, but Pirates favored squad tactics and they should have clustered that kind of landing. And who did they need to move around that they couldn't use their ships for?

Samus remembered that Pirate patrol she'd glimpsed in the distance, a lander craft traveling just barely above the street pavement. Somehow the local defense force had made the invaders afraid of the skies. Some sort of powerful anti-air? Was that the "emergency countermeasures" Aurora had mentioned?

She glanced up at the dark blue sky with unease. Samus needed to get in contact with the Aurora unit. It would have the answers she needed because right now all she had were suspicions and a leaden feeling in her gut. A quick motion of her hand and she called up a view of the city map. A crooked orange line marked out the path Nakamura had given her to the hardwired Aurora access node. It ran in a direct line through the city streets before curling around the outside of the vast Research Center campus.

However, there was a shorter path. Nakamura's computer had plotted a route that avoided things like secure research areas Samus had nothing resembling clearance for. She looked up the gently sloping street where the valley narrowed around her. The Research Center was a massive sprawling complex of hulking buildings that stretched across two of the three canyon mouths that formed the end of this valley. The web of connected facilities had campus protrusions jutting out into the city in may places, showing both the continuous construction and the fact that this Center clearly had more power than the city. The city map confirmed that there should actually be a path to her marked destination that stayed inside that web of connected facilities. That would allow her to stay out of sight of the Pirates until she managed to repair her suit more and gain some intelligence on what was actually happening on this planet.

Her journey through the rest of the city was suspiciously easy. Nakamura had made it sound like there was an active ground war going on down here, but Samus did not even see a single other Pirate patrol. Only, silence, broken glass, and dust. Up ahead the tall sturdy wall of the Research Center campus rose to mark the terminus of the road.

One of those Pirate missiles had landed somewhere nearby on the far side of this bit of the facility grounds. Samus' gun began to angle itself towards every doorway and shadow that she passed, waiting for some unknown attack. But instead, as if cued by her thoughts, the suit began to pick up a renewed round of transmissions from the orbiting Pirate forces. There was not much information Samus could glean from them through this fleet's still curiously advanced encryption, but she did noticed the prolific abasements in the message headings. Her brow lowered as her watchful stare became a glare. She recognized when Pirates talked like that. That kind of language meant Ridley was down here on the planet, receiving those transmissions from his terrified orbit crew. It was all the more reason to make contact with the Aurora unit and complete the repairs to her suit.

Samus turned her attention away from the sky and resumed concentrating on making her way stealthily down these deserted streets when the suit's transmission decryption software suddenly beeped an alert of total defeat. A new dense burst of data was streaming down from the orbiting Pirate forces above, but that was not what made Samus freeze and look up wide eyed into the violet tinged path to space. Her suit couldn't crack the meaning of this transmission, but it recognized the format far too easily. Its signature was that of pure Chozo technology. And it was talking to something down here on the planet. Samus had destroyed the cube, but obviously she had missed something else on that ship. What had they found deep out in space. And what did it have to do with this planet?

This gate into the Research campus was an easy fifteen foot vertical jump, clearly designed more to dissuade than to bar. Inside, huge sturdy buildings stood amid carefully arranged planters of local flora. Off in the distance, still a ways off, Samus could see the largest building that had to be the main control center. The subtle shield signature her suit picked up spelled out that it was where Aurora was huddled with her five thousand remaining charges.

Then a sound rang in the air. Samus snapped her head back to see the dots of more rocket burners rising into the air. The Pirates were at it again, whatever they were doing. Samus decided to find an inside path.

The front entrance to this nearest building was locked but the armored glass on each side of the door gave way soon enough. Inside, Samus grabbed the nearest important looking computer and let her suit's hacking rip out a floor plan for this place, plotting a path to Aurora that didn't expose her to Pirates launching unknown payloads down on her head. Then she turned and walked in the direction the building's designers least wanted an intruder to go.

The armored security door blinked out angry red messages, bright in the dim interior light. Then Samus' suit scan brushed against the classified systems and those firewalls crumpled too. The door slid open with a soft hiss. Samus noted the flow of air; a slight negative pressure inside, sucking atmosphere deeper into the building. So, fear of something escaping rather than fear of contamination. That indicated that the scientists weren't worrying about something delicate but rather they studying something they didn't understand or that they didn't control. Weren't they always.

Samus walked through the dimly lit white-walled corridor. The only light came from the widely spaced emergency labels for doors and exits. Heavy doors to experimental lab rooms slid open as she passed them, all yielding clearance to the suit scan. Each new room revealed more Chozo artifacts, sometimes accompanied by the knocked over chairs and dropped tools of the panicked evacuation. Samus wasn't surprised by the artifacts, after all that was why the colony had been established in the first place. It was also no longer surprising that the scientists had been so cautious about what was inside this place. Until the Pirates arrived, attempting to operate Chozo machinery without a manual would likely have been the most dangerous activity on this planet.

Deeper inside the facility Samus passed larger lab strewn with disassembled Chozo technology surrounded by the lab's own devices. Thick power conduits snaked off to vanish into the walls while above color coded pipes carried unknown fluids. One of them shimmered with a faint coat of frozen condensation and slowly falling fog. Suit scan ripped free some encoded research documents but Samus didn't have time to read them all. The few snippets that flashed in front of her eyes referenced the scientists trying to uncover the origins of an ancient weapon project. Of course they were. However, a glance at the materials and degrees of corrosion also revealed that these Chozo devices hailed from what had to be a thousand year plus spread of history. The previous owners had been on this planet for a long time. But then they left, like they left everywhere else.

The silence was beginning to bother Samus. She was getting close to the rendezvous point with Aurora but she still had yet to see a single sign of life in this vast Research Center. The next abandoned lab chamber held a row of large metallic canisters of obvious Chozo design. They were all open and empty. One of the researcher's computer displays was still active, projecting a magnified view of a slab of Chozo engravings up onto a blank white wall.

Samus didn't need the annotated translation to read what it said.

"Behold and stand amazed, our most terrible instrument strikes forth, though not loosed by our hand. Hear its approach, travelers who tread on our bones. Fear its hunger, for within it are multitudes and evolution is its constant. Marvel at its creation, on a far distant planet for far stranger prey. And weep for those who unleash it here, for this tomb shall be the cradle of its apotheosis."

Samus felt a faint shiver wash down her back as she walked back out into the long main hallway. The Chozo were her people as much as humanity was, but she had no illusions about either. Both races had a history soaked in blood and monstrous invention. And the Chozo had the greater guilt by being able to dimly foresee what would become of their actions and yet still proceeding. Her eyes narrowed as she continued her path through the tangled passages of the Research Station. She wondered what those long departed Chozo had seen here when they peered into the future. What new monster nurtured their guilt? Was it another damaged creation like Mother Brain, or corrupted machines like on Elisia, or a shortsighted sin of unimaginable proportions like their single greatest failure, the-

A harsh sound ripped through the still, breathless air. The terrible screech crashed off the walls, thrashed through echoing corridors, and ripped through trembling ventilation ducts. Samus was already running, legs pumping in her frantic face down the hallways as her heart pounded violently in her ears like not even Ridley had managed to inspire. That sound was like crackling electricity, and shearing metal, and burning atmosphere. It was the sound of a voracious hunger without a mouth.

Samus knew that sound. She knew the fear it inspired. It was the call of a metroid.

...​

 

[Cuofeng]

Chapter 7: Hunters

...
​

It was dark, with only a dim orange glow separating sight from blindness. Samus woke up breathing heavily, her heart pounding in her ears. She was lying on her side, curled into a loose ball at the bottom of this wide, fabric lined bowl. The glowing transparent lid that lay over it might have been claustrophobic but this place had been made to house someone far larger than a six year old girl. She wouldn't have to wait long. They always let her out soon after she woke.

Samus' chest continued to thud but she didn't move. She just stayed lying on her side, only her open eyes proving that she was now awake. Even those eyes didn't move, focused on a single spot of dark purple fabric near to her face. It wasn't any articulate thought that held her still, just a fear so pervasive and ill defined that it didn't even register as an emotion anymore. Thought was not relevant to survival, so Samus refused to think. She just shut down.

The glowing energy canopy stretched above her nest-like bed. It was orange, and round, like the colony dome at sunset. Her home. But that was gone. Far away.

A dark shape moved in the stone hall outside the nest. Samus saw it in the corner of her eye but she remained still. Then the orange glow blinked out, and the dark shape remained.

The force of watchful eyes pressed down on Samus' back so she sat up. It was hard to rise, everything felt heavier here. With the canopy gone her lungs were already starting to tingle with discomfort. But there it was, a huge hand with long fingers, holding out a pale green mask. Samus leaned forward and let the hand press the mask against her face. For a moment it cupped her mouth and nose and then something about the mask changed and she could barely feel it anymore, only a slight pressure on her face and she could breathe freely again.

The tall dark shape drew back its hand and stood up. It was very tall. Samus' eyes were adjusting to the shadows and she looked up at the looming figure. Dim yellow eyes stared down back at her. She recognized the grey feathers under that hood; like a bird that had gotten old. The other one of them was more brown.

The old bird made a soft clack with its beak as it stepped back. Samus got onto her hands and knees and crawled up the soft fabric rim of the bowl bed. If she didn't then those hands would reach down and grab her; gentle but so very strong as it lifted her. But she moved on her own and in a moment she sat on the rim with her feet against the far edge of the nest that sloped down to the ground. She was already breathing heavier again. Everything was so hard to do here, it felt like her body was filled with bricks. As she steeled herself Samus noticed her chest was hurting again today, despite the mask on her face. That was bad. That meant they would put her back in the tank soon.

Samus slid down to the floor and pushed herself up into standing. The old bird watched her, so tall that Samus only tended to look at dark brown robes around its knees. Then without a word it turned and walked away down the dimly lit stone passage. Samus followed, her feet awkwardly heavy against the weathered floor. Walking was cold, they hadn't given her back her shoes. Samus looked up at the huge figure walking before her. She couldn't see its legs under the robes, but she thought that it might be taking very short steps to help her keep pace. Samus kept her head down and continued walking through the shadows.

They passed a room full of machines that Samus didn't understand and then the old bird suddenly stopped. For a moment its tall back was still and then the old bird trembled with a harsh cough. Samus watched it. They had been coughing more lately. She had an idea that it was the air. When they first brought her in here the air had stung her eyes as well as her lungs. Now it was better, but the birds had started coughing sometimes. She wondered if they went into the tank too.

Then the old bird continued on and soon they walked into the bright room. It was only bright in comparison to the other places here but still Samus had to squint her eyes as she took her heavy steps inside. The stone walls were very very tall, and somewhere so far up that it hurt Samus' neck to look that high there was a window, one that let down a thick shaft of warm yellow light.

Samus looked around and saw the other bird standing by the round metal cabinets that filled one wall of the room. The old bird stopped walking near entrance and Samus continued on across the open space. There was a corner of this room that the birds had made soft. There was a cloth rug on the floor, there were small things to sit on, and a thick board set on the ground that Samus could use as a table. Samus reached the little metal block she used as a chair and sat down on the folded cloth someone had put on top of it. She tried to not look like she was panting as the other bird walked over and set a small deep-walled bowl on the wooden slab in front of her. Then it tapped the green mask on her face and it slid off easily, before being set set down on the low slab next to the bowl. For a moment, Samus didn't move, just feeling the faint burning in her lungs again, but the robed figure standing over her reached out its huge hand again and gestured to the bowl.

"Kektayok'd."

Samus grabbed the bowl with both hands, bringing it up to her lips so she could suck out some of the warm tan mush inside. The bird above her made another noise, a vague grunt that Samus didn't think was a word even in their language. This one spoke a lot more than the other. In fact for the first few days Samus had thought that only one of them had a voice.

She continued eating as she silently watched them move about the room. Or at least she watched the Voice, the old bird was soon gone again. She rarely saw them both at the same time. At first she had not known how many there really were; before she learned to recognize them it seemed like there could be hundreds of the creatures. It had been terrifying. In those days she'd been trying to escape, imagining finding the ship that she dimly remembered seeing the inside of when she woke in pain with cold burns on her skin and tears in her eyes. But every time she wandered away here she only found more dimly lit stone rooms or huge metal doors she couldn't open. Then she would turn around and one of the birds would be standing there, silent and strong like statues dressed in robes. It was ok that she failed though, Samus didn't know anywhere else she could go to. Her home was dead.

When she finished eating her food and pressed the mask back on her face she just sat on her little seat and watched Voice do whatever tasks occupied his time. These feathers weren't grey like the other bird's but from what Samus could see of his head and forearms there seemed to be fewer, exposing wrinkled grey skin below. She guessed he was a boy, because she knew boy adults went bald sometimes. Well, people did, so she supposed birds could too.

As Samus watched Grey Voice wave his hands on the other side of the room to summon of a glowing web of alien letters floating in the air, she wondered why she didn't feel afraid anymore. She just felt tired, and empty. She wondered if fear was something you could use up, and if you spent too much time feeling it then you never could feel it again. She hoped that was true. Then maybe the nightmares would stop soon. She didn't want to dream of smoke and wind and the shadows of wings anymore.

But then, even if it was hard to walk, Samus couldn't sit still for any longer. She got up slowly, keeping an eye on Grey Voice's back as he continued to conduct the orange symphony in the air before him. Not having shoes was cold on her feet, but it made her quiet. Samus slipped out of the room.

The string of connected stone halls here were tall and they were endless. Samus thought that this place might be underground, she had only ever seen the one window. She walked down empty passages, her feet making soft claps on the smooth floors that echoed off the silent walls.

She thought that there were supposed to be more people here. The room where she slept had eight of those nest beds, though all but hers were always dark and empty. Most of the chambers she poked her head into were shadowed and dusty, filled with metal machines that glowed with dim lights like they were in a deep sleep from which they might never awake. Samus touched her hand to a painted wall, tracing her fingers around the feet of a bird person painted there. This wall stretched down into the distance and every inch was covered with those images, an endless row of silent images. There had been a lot more people here once.

Then Samus came up against another one of the metal doors that blocked her way. Her face didn't even come up halfway on it. She lowered her brow as she stared at it and the thin film of glowing white energy that covered the metal plates. You couldn't touch it with your skin, it shocked you. Throwing rocks at it didn't work either. But she knew they opened. Days ago she'd seen Old Bird down a hall as Grey Voice was taking her back to bed. He had been standing in front of a door like this, but after Samus passed out of sight she had heard the sound of metal sliding and a brief hiss of pressurized air.

She wandered away from the door, back into one of the many abandoned rooms filled with machinery. It was all so quiet. Grey Voice would notice she was gone soon. Then one item caught her eye, sitting on a table like surface by itself. It looked like a hollow metal hand. It looked like one of the bird people's hands. Samus had an idea.

Then she tried to lift the metal glove and she began thinking that her idea might not have been so smart after all. Things were so heavy here, and the hand was very big. It toppled to the ground with a loud clang. But Samus was not about to give up just because she realized her genius might actually be stupidity. She discovered that when she managed to lift the metal glove up by the wrist and planted her feet firmly she could drag it along the floor. It made a horrible scraping noise that echoed down the halls but she could move it. Walking backwards and straining her tired arms she managed to to bring the hand to the door, always looking up to see if either of the bird people were racing down to grab her. Her panting made the inside of the facemask fill with uncomfortable moisture but the hall behind her was still empty. Then she reached down, got a grip, strained, and lifted the gauntlet up to touch the door.

The energy barrier disappeared and a breeze blew past Samus' hair as the door opened. Outside was something new. Samus stepped through the door.

If the previous places she had seen on this world were empty then this new cavern was certainly abandoned. Cracks had appeared in the stone and the moisture that dripped down had brought with it life, spreading out in waves of colonization along the floor. Samus edged around the fungus-like vegetation, looking out at the lawn of tiny stalks which glowed blue at their tips, casting a tint on everything like the tunnel was underwater. It was cold, and the stone sucked heat out of her through her bare feet. Then another color of light added to the milieu and Samus turned back to realize that the energy barrier had sprung back on the metal door. She had left the gauntlet inside. That was bad.

She gripped her hands into little fists at her side. Well, there was nothing she could do about that. If she wanted to get back she'd just have to find another way. Her eyes were starting to sting, like the old air had done before. It was very cold. Her body began to tremble, shivers rattling her bones as her feet burned where they touched the bare ground. But as she squinted against the pain, her eyes had adjusted just enough to see a faint light further down this tunnel, one that had a comforting warm glow to it. Samus kept her hands clenched as she began to walk.

When she bashed her toes against a sharp rock it only added a deeper pain on top of the numb burning that was already spreading across her exposed skin. When her hair brushed her face it stung. But Samus recognized the color of sunlight whose indirect glow painted that rough wall ahead of her. If there was an opening to the sun it would be warmer there and she could plan her next move. She kept her eyes focused on that promise of light as she carefully made her way past a broken fissure in the floor, a dark chasm that led down into some more natural cavern. There were distant noises down there, sounds like clicking scissors. Samus began to move faster.

Her jaw began to hurt from how tightly clenched she kept it to prevent her teeth from bouncing off each other in her building shivers. Shivering didn't make her feel any warmer, it just made important things harder to do. She wished she could stop it once and for all, just like the fear. She'd traveled quite a ways now towards the sunlight, this tunnel was longer than she'd thought. The noises behind her were getting closer; scraping noises like claws on rock, climbing up from below. Up from the dark.

Then Samus was running, clumsy bare feet jabbing down on broken rock. She stumbled, scraped, and bled but then she was up again and still running. There were thumps behind her, the sound of something jumping and then scrabbling and then jumping again, all the while filling the tunnel with the echoing sound of its heavy wet breathing. Samus noticed a second, shrill and muffled noise mixing with the air in pulses that timed with her own frantic panting and then she realized that she was screaming. It was a horse, weak scream that clawed its way out with each breath she shoved out of her lungs, a sound born only to strangle in the space of her little mask. The thing was going to catch her. She hadn't even seen it but it was coming. With every time Samus' foot slammed down onto the rock her mind supplied the imagined feeling of claws cutting into her back, weight bearing her down the the ground, and teeth around her neck. So she ran.

Then she reached the end of the tunnel and her fingertips scraped at the rock as the flung herself around the corner towards the color of daylight. Shafts of blazing light cut down from above and it was so bright it blinded her. Samus threw an arm up over her eyes and in that same moment she tripped. But when she fell it was onto a soft surface, a spongy mat of fibers, and when she opened her eyes she lay on green moss in a pool of light. There was a trail of red behind her. She looked down and saw that her feet were bleeding. More blood trickled down from her knees.

A loud thump pounded from the dark tunnel. Samus could barely see through the shadows anymore; the sunlight had stolen her vision. But there was a shape creeping forward, strange and terrible. She saw two huge legs that arced up like those of spiders, and teeth in a grasping mouth that hung below. Samus sent silent screams at her leaden limbs, crawling backwards along the ground. The creature briefly shied away, it didn't like the light. But it was hungry and so it took a step forward, claws piercing into the pale shaft of day.

Samus dodged away. Every muscle in her body ached with tension as they surged like wound springs, but she knew in some primal part of her that she couldn't keep this up. Any of these movements might be the last she had strength for. And then, through the bitter burning cold that surrounded her, a new shiver passed across the back of her neck. Slowly, driven by a sense other than thought, Samus turned her head away from the hungry breast.

A massive metal statue sat crouched at the end of the cavern, a cyclopean watcher amid this mossy ruin. It looked a little like the birds who had captured her. A dimly glowing orb the size of a human torso was clutched in its long fingered hands but as Samus turned to behold it, a building flame rushed up from somewhere deep within the metal plates. The statue's eyes ignited red. It saw her.

And it was angry.

The ground trembled as the statue shifted its torso, like the planet itself was quaking in fear. Then, with glacial speed and power, the statue stood up. It was shaped like the bird people, but stronger, plated in armor and a head that was only reduced to a single slit of burning red eyes. Samus knew she needed to move but she was paralyzed in place. Her mouth was open but she didn't even breath. Back at the mouth of the cavern the beast roared in anxiety, bouncing back and forth across the line of shadow as its stomach fought with its fear. The ground was shaking but it smelled blood and so the decision was made. With a harsh shriek the creature leaped forward.

The movements of the statue were slow but unending. It let go of the precious orb with one hand, and that arm unfolded outwards with curious slowness. But that powerful motion traveled down each joint from shoulder, to elbow, to wrist, building like a wave approaching the shore. The long metal fingers unfolded in the same deceptive grace. They brushed through the air and then met the path of the leaping beast in midair. Viscera splashed against the far wall. A thin mist of blood sparkled in the sunbeams.

Samus let out a breathless yelping shriek and the predator's body smashed down beside her, green blood pulsing out of the mortal rent as it thrashed in the confusion and shock of its final heartbeats. Its other leg fell down across from her, severed. The statue was still moving and its feet slowly crunched against the stone as it turned to face the on the girl before it. Samus rolled and scrambled away, fingers and toes biting against the stone without any concern for pain. A huge metal hand gently waved through the spot were she had just been lying and shards of stone exploded out to cut across her legs and back. She couldn't scream if she wanted to. Samus crawled and rushed across broken ground as heavy footsteps fell behind her. But then she was pressed against a corner of heavy damp stone on each side of her. She turned back and before her stood the statue, pure black against the beautiful sunlight behind it.

Samus closed her eyes as it drew back its hand once more.

Then a rushing sound filled the cavern and a blast of wind sent Samus' blond hair flying. The world echoed with the collision of two unstoppable forces. She opened her eyes to see a new shape standing over her, both arms raised to meet the impact of the statue's falling hand. Dark brown robes whipped one last time in the speed of their arrival before they fell down to once more cover the clawed feet that had scratched the stone on each side of her. Old Bird's powerful limbs trembled with exertion as he held up the weight of an angry planet above a scared child.

A single pale yellow eye was in view to look down at two little blue ones set in red veins irritated from the hostile air. Then, as he looked down at her, Old Bird slowly opened his beak. Samus had only ever heard him say a handful of words in the months they had held her here. He had always seemed content to let Grey Voice be the one to break the silence of their dusty, lonely world. But now he turned his head back to face the terrible burning eyes of the statue and he began to speak. No, he began to sing.

Samus didn't know if it was words. She didn't think it was. But it was a note that spilled out through metal and stone, flesh and bone. In it there was sorrow, and regret, and endless endless years, but under it all there was strength and righteous fury. It was the fire that burned within and knew that even against the vast uncaring universe and impossible odds there was no choice but to stand up against all creation. To throw everything one tiny life had against the might of infinity. With this song it might be an even match.

The statue stood still. Then it drew back its hand and turned to slowly walk back to its plinth, sitting down once more to clutch that glowing orb. It fell silent and the fire departed from its eyes. Then the only sound in the cavern was Old Bird taking a heavy, shaking breath. For a long moment he stood there, back heaving as his hands trembled with the echo of more exertion than he had made in centuries. Then he felt a small tug at his robes, down below his knee. He turned and saw the small human child, weak with fear and cold, exhausted beyond all measure, with blood pooling at her feet. But this child was standing on buckling legs and held his robe tight in her fist as forgotten tears made lines down her face. Her eyes met his.

Old Bird kneeled down to gather up the child in his hands. As soon as he clutched her, he felt the human go limp. Her eyes closed in sudden merciful sleep, the last tiny reserve of energy depleted. Her injured legs folded against her chest, Old Bird could cradle her in his hands like holding an egg. For a moment he looked down at this tiny creature in silence. Then he stood up and walked back towards the temple halls.

The ancient statue sat alone in the empty cavern as motes of dust danced in the sunlight.

…​

The crackling electric screech of a metroid echoed through the halls of the Research Station. Samus ran, her mind leaping through the possibilities as her blood pounded with the familiar beat of fear. A metroid outbreak on the planet. Who'd brought them here; the Pirates, the Federation? The Pirates had been firing some sort of live cargo in their missiles. The Federation had a history of experiments with metroids. And Samus also remembered a series of ancient empty metal canisters in the labs behind her. The Chozo inscription had mentioned a creation, had that race released those monsters of theirs here as well as SR388? Whose sin was it this time? Whatever the case, Samus was not in any shape to fight anything on that level. She needed to contain it or escape, and right now escape was far preferable.

The glass window of an office flitted by on her right as her orange reflection flashed across it. Samus' heart rate was rising but fear was not allowed to take purchase in her mind. She'd only rebuilt three of her suit's shield emitters so far, once they failed her armor was just metal and carbon. The path through the floor plan still shone in her eyes, an illusionary line traced through walls to the rendezvous point. She needed to contact Aurora, message Nakamura. Let them know that every living being on this planet was in mortal danger. And if those in command already knew, then...

The next office wall she passed lay on the floor as scattered glass shards. It was broken inward, and inside she saw small piles of grey dust. Scan still said that the material was simply unorganized organic molecules, simply another form of normal dirt, but now this dust sickened her. One part of the dust pile still retained its shape as a human forearm, fingers outstretched and grasping. Samus kneeled down beside it, boots crunching on the broken glass. She reached out with her gauntleted hand and brushed the grey arm. At the slightest contact the ashy shape lost cohesion and dissolved into the same fine grey dust which covered the rest of the office. A feeding metroid consumed everything. They left only a shadow.

Samus glanced up at the computer terminal still projected up over bashed and gouged desk. There was an alert flashing there. "Emergency procedure A1" Whatever that plan was it hadn't been enough for this victim. Also, this plan of security through obscurity didn't help Samus right now. Aurora would know but that upcoming meeting had just plummeted in priority.

Samus' visor map redirected to show her a path straight outside. Right now, she'd prefer to fight the entire Pirate landing force than what was lurking in this laboratory. She started running, following the glowing line that only existed before her eyes.

Around the corner the hallway opened up into some large central room, a kind of hub for the researchers combing through the loot of the Chozo ruins. Samus' eyes were locked on the next exit, only dimly taking in an expanse of clean tiles and circular administrative desks from the periphery of her vision. Then her suit radar blinked in the corner of her mask and she dropped into cover before she had time to process the thought.

She was down on the floor, her armored back against a kiosk desk, when a shadow washed across the far wall. Other than the sound of her breathing echoing through her skull, the only disturbance to the silence was a faint crackle. Samus could feel her ears straining as she focused on that sound, like tiny sparks and ozone. A metroid barely had anything that resembled biology; their locomotion was an independently generated antigrav field. They didn't walk, or breath, or copulate. But they ate. And they grew.

The numbers flashed on Samus' visor as the suit calculated the size of the creature that cast that brief shadow. It was still on the small side, not yet near the next metamorphosis. That was good news. However, though the metroid hadn't spotted her suit-shielded biological signatures from anything short of line of sight, the creature had drifted over to the path Samus had planned to take out of this building. Well, that plan wasn't happening any more.

She didn't move, having no choice but to trust the thin barrier of metal and concrete or whatever material the architect had decided to use for this desk feature. She was just lucky that the suit helmet meant nothing could hear her loud breathing. All she had to do was watch the wavering orange dot move along the floor plan map that floated before her eyes. There, it was leaving. It would just take a second to...

The dot stopped. The faint crackling, popping sound got louder. Samus' hand clenched inside her weapon. It was still fine, that pattern had other explanations. Metroids at this growth stage moved in strange, random ways. It hadn't detected her, it was just...

A hungry electric chirp echoed out across the flat white walls of the lab. The dot raced towards her. Well, so much for hiding. Samus sprang up and vaulted over the desk bank with one hand easily lifting her body weight. Behind her the curious chirping instantly transformed into a furious screech like lightning and tearing metal. However, even as Samus' feet hit the ground in a full sprint a wash of angry light grew in the barrel of her weapon. She reached the far exit in under two seconds, the toes of her boots gouging holds in the industrial strength tiles that lined the floor. The she was at an intersection where she spun around to meet the coming charge.

The metroid flew towards her, its bulbous transparent dome half hidden behind the grasping talons and fangs that sparked with arcing energy as it screamed. The creatures always looked incomplete, an organ that had broken free of some grotesque host to float along propelled by its own malevolence and hunger. But it was fast. Samus narrowed her eyes and let fire the fully charged blast from her power beam.

In the tight confines of the funneling hallway the metroid had no chance of dodging. Of course, in Samus' damaged state that meager beam also had no chance of actually harming the creature but the sudden burst of light, heat, and force was certainly surprising. Before the metroid recovered its shaken equilibrium, bobbing and twitching in the air amid the dust raining down from the blast-cracked ceiling, Samus was gone.

Her boots made a good deal of sound impacting the floor at this pace but right now Samus was more concerned with speed than secrecy. The metroid would be back on her in seconds. She needed a way to fight. Her darting path took her past labs full of disassembled Chozo machines or slabs of carved inscriptions. The her visor flashed as the suit scan offered up a new destination; a little rectangle in the floor plan map labeled Security. That would have to do.

Samus smashed around the corner already firing at where the Security office should be. A charge beam blast hit the armored security glass, followed by a volley of smaller shots that propagated the thin web of cracks as she ran forward. Really, she had to complement whoever had sprung for the quality of materials in this seemingly low security wing. However, even the resolute glass couldn't stand up to an armor enhanced punch at her full running speed. The gun crunched through the shattering window first. Her suit's main armament was a hyper advance beam weapon of unparalleled adaptability, but it was also thirty pounds of ultra dense alloys strapped on the end of her arm. So sometimes she hit things with it.

Samus rolled up to her feet amid the expanding rain of flying glass. The far walls of the Security station held weapon racks, and Samus was already firing her weapon to reduce them to base components even as the suit returned its disappointing scan results. She supposed that hoping for a full belt of cryomissiles was a little too much, but still she'd been hoping for more than ten low voltage stun guns when a metroid was hunting her. As she blasted apart the few more promising looking supplies one of the guns escaped destruction by slipping off the rack. It hit the ground and fired off two little needles with a soft chunk, trailing thin wires. They bounced off Samus' thigh.

Amid the smoke and dust, she swept her gun across the room, the barrel now sucking in the newly aerosolized rubble. Plasma coil components and heavy element shards; better than nothing. Still not really useful against a metroid. Particularly one that was currently hurtling towards her with the intent to devour. Time to move.

"Basic Missiles Restored"

However, that did open up new possibilities when it came to this floor plan she was navigating from. Scan opened and closed the far security door, letting Samus out just in time for the metroid to smash into the metal as it slammed shut behind her. That should hold it for two and a half second. Then she heard a shattering sound behind her and had to commend the little guy on being stronger than he looked. It was a pity it still wanted to rip her molecules apart.

She took the next corner at a speed that would be illegal in a school zone, her toes briefly denting footholds into the walls. By this point in her life she was quite experienced at running for her life but unfortunately metroids were fast and didn't have to worry about things like traction. Her only chance was to keep it uncertain and confused. Her still healing chest strained as she sprinted, the metroid's crackling ionization closing behind her.

Then she stuck out her hand into a passing doorway and abruptly pulled herself back in a bone jarringly swift change of direction. The suit and her innate enhancements meant she didn't quite dislocate her shoulder as her fingers dug into the metal frame. The metroid missed that turn, but that was still not quite enough. In the same instant an ionizing shriek erupted behind her and its lunge scratched against her right shoulder.

Pain shot through Samus' every cell and she screamed, even as she launched back to her feet and kept running. A single point of the metroid's fangs had scraped across her suit's shoulder plate as it hurtled by in its missed strike, but that was enough. The life energy absorption attack didn't care about armor and was barely dampened by shields. No, that crackling spark jolted straight to the core of that mystical essence that defined all life. Identifying that fundamental force had been called the Chozo's greatest discovery. So of course they had made a monster that consumed it.

Samus' lungs spasmed in protest as she still ran through the darkened facility, hearing the telltale sounds of the metroid swooping back around and launching after her trail. It was faster than her and Samus was uncertain if she could withstand even another glancing blow. However, up ahead a very interesting part of this building's floor plan matched up. Her gun shifted as the metal rearranged itself, and as she ran her right arm thudded three times. Energy shrouded projectiles launched out and downwards, all detonating against the floor up ahead. Right above where the map said a particularly high ceilinged room lay below.

She jumped and spun in the air, turning her back to the floor as it crumbled and collapsed beneath her. The metroid screamed as it raced through towards her, but the gun thudded again as missiles shot straight up at the ceiling above. Samus fell down through the crumbling floor and the top of the room fell with her, sealing the way behind her. The metroid's thwarted shriek reverberated in fury and hunger through the shifting rubble as it collided and bounced off.

Samus smirked as she plummeted down into the dark. Then she hit the floor flat on her back and abruptly remembered that her organs weren't done healing yet.

Ouch.

...​

 

[Cuofeng]

Chapter 8: A Sacrifice

...​

Dust trickled down from the rubble packed ceiling through the dim glow of emergency lighting. Samus raised herself off newly cracked floor tiles and onto her feet as she glanced around this tall, empty room. There were balconies from a higher level looking out over the space she had just fallen through. The faint green lights of exit signs washed out to give a vague suggestion of walls down further hallways down here in the lower reaches of the Research Center.

Ripping and scraping noises up above indicated that the hunting metroid was still irritated that she had escaped. But then a second later those sounds vanished and once again Samus was left in silence. The metroid had given up, but if there was one of those creatures then there were undoubtedly more. No one seeking to use those living weapons would release just one. However, Samus still needed to reach the rendezvous point with Nakamura's Aurora unit. If that computer was overseeing the protection of the remaining colonists then it had to be told about the metroid.

If it didn't already know.

Samus shifted the fingers of her left hand to navigate virtual menus and expanded the facility map to fill her vision. She'd fallen down into the sub-levels, but this was still part of the Chozo research building. A shining line appeared in the air as the suit plotted a course out to the contact node Nakamura had sent her towards. Now there was nothing left to do but hurry.

Her heavy footsteps echoed through the quiet halls as Samus jogged along through this man-made cavern. Then she approached at an intersection of passages and noticed several small items on the floor. Some scattered papers, a woman's shoe, and a data stylus, all kicked to the corners of the hall and forming the vague suggestion of trail off towards a nearby staircase. They were the kind of things that might be dropped if the staff of this facility were evacuating under an "Emergency Procedure A1".

Samus slowed to a stop as she glanced at her map again. A quick command to the suit sent it searching for a new set of parameters: a large room, or a blank space, armored and secure, somewhere deep under the facility that was left off the map. Somewhere the humans might be hiding their shelter.

In a blink a flashing icon appeared as her visor displayed a message. "A likely site for the evacuation shelter has been located." Samus had been right, it was deep and protected. Perhaps this was location of some of civilians Aurora had safe in its charge. Or maybe these people were lost and cut off since the chaos of the first attack. Samus changed direction, turning away from her exit route.

It wasn't more than a hundred yards of walking before she began to see the indications. A set of elevator doors were twisted open, the metal crumpled and ripped. Something had made a path through the lift shaft. Something with claws that burnt like arcing electricity. Samus' felt her heart over a precipice. She started to run.

A screen on the wall was still flashing the message "Emergency Shelter" with an arrow pointing down the hall. Samus' boot made a print in fine grey dust that lay next to a pair of broken glasses. There were gouge marks in the white wall panels, and scratches across the floor. Then Samus turned a final corner to see the massive armored shelter door. It was mercifully unmarked by those scratches and gouges. The slab still shone of polished metal, designed to lock out the world with heavy alloys and powerful shields.

But the door was ajar.

Samus stopped running. She slowly walked forward, the silence of these tunnels growing to a ringing in her ears. Then she crossed the vault threshold into a soft warm light.

The shelter was a very large room, now dappled with strange shadows. This uncertain illumination spread out over a statue garden of fallen corpses. Samus' footsteps faintly echoed against the floor as she walked between the pale grey bodies, frozen in the collapsed rictus of their final moments. There were over a hundred here, most in two clusters, one scattered near the vault door and another pressed back against the far corner or the chamber. They hadn't gotten the door closed by the time the first metroid made it through. Then Samus looked up and saw what was causing the strange speckled light.

Over half of the overhead lights were covered with a fibrous organic webbing, the strands stretching and twisting down to form bulbous tumors. Samus' fury began to beat faster in her chest; metroid eggs. No, something different. Metroid hives, all clinging to the light fixtures for the heat and energy they provided. The plague was already multiplying. This wasn't the natural metroid cycle, if such a thing had any meaning. These pods would not yield something like the Hatchling, they were engineered to spawn instant killers. Someone must have brought the survivors of one of the other metroid weapon programs here to this planet.

Samus looked around the ashy charnel house, her eyes taking in the clues of this slaughter. After the feast the metroids accomplished here at least one must have gathered enough energy to trigger its metamorphosis into a higher form. There was no chance of a queen already, the usual egg layers, but Samus had seen strange twists in the species life cycle before, too many times. Those various groups seeking to use them had made many terrible things.

Fury rose in her chest as her fist clenched at her side. Those idiots! Who was it this time? The Pirates, the Humans, or even the damn Chozo themselves? They kept making the same mistakes. The same mistakes over and over and every time more people died! How many hundreds? How many thousands? And she was always there to clean up after them, to bring down the necessary justice that the universe refused to supply. So much of her life had been spent dispensing justice she'd not had the chance to enjoy vengeance.

The suit noticed her base biology racing. "Alert: Agitated mental state detected. Your higher thought processes will be compromised if you continue."

She took a breath to calm herself. If the suit was unveiling new types of warnings like that then it must still be on medical watch from her injuries. As if in response, a dull ache in her abdomen reminded her of how good painkillers would feel right about now. Meditative ice chilled back around her mind, allowing the fury to drift away. She could tend this anger for later.

Her glare darted around the woven husks of the hives and saw that most of the eggs had already burst, the broken shreds hanging down as evidence of the violent hatching. What remained was too small for a traditional egg, and it looked like the inside had been chambered, further subdividing the space. Whatever hatched from that would have been underdeveloped, lacking even the normal metroid ability for limited thought until it had time to grow and harden.

Not that she would give it the chance to hatch. A charged power beam blast tore through the first hive egg, followed by a missile whose detonation ripped apart the writhing half-formed thing that fell out. The wrecked shelter flashed again and again as Samus let out more shots, shredding everything that was left down to cells and fluid. Hot wind whipped around the pillars, allowing the ash shadows of the fallen to drift away into the air and oblivion. But still she knew some of the metroids had already hatched. They would be spreading out, seeking any higher organization life to drain to dust. In her current state Samus couldn't fight them. She needed to repair her suit and Aurora-929 was her best chance for that. She just needed to get to the rendezvous past a minimum of one hunting metroid she already knew was patrolling this building.

Well, it had been over twelve hours since she'd decided to do something nearly suicidal. She was due.

Samus silently raced through the faculty. Her suit might sometimes look like a parade ground mascot, but Samus could be surprisingly stealthy in it when she wanted. Precise physical control and subtle manipulations of the surface shields meant that as she swiftly moved through the stairways and laboratory halls she made almost no noise at all. Unless she directly stumbled into that metroid again, there was no way it would find her.

That thought was still forming in her head when the crackling screech rang out with a familiarity that made her stomach drop. Samus couldn't stop the impulse to hang her head in exasperation. She'd encountered S-rank bounty hunters who were worse at tracking her down than this lone half-grown floating aberration. Seriously, had she stepped in something it could smell? The exit was still two hundred yards away, up a staircase and through a web of corridors that made Samus want to strangle some architects. She was already running at her current top speed but the little blinking dot had just appeared on her radar and it was moving still faster.

"Upgrade materials detected"

She could have kissed someone at that moment but instead Samus settled for taking a sharp right and smashing through a door not rated to withstand her current level of desperation. Inside was another lab, with the same computers and piping across the ceiling, more Chozo artifacts for federation study. Samus glanced around and recognized the delicate device of bronze colored metal in the middle of the room as some sort of Chozo observation device or a sensor. But the virtual icon was floating over it so she was already smashing her fist through the weakest looking lens before she could appreciate any more of its elegant design. The inner workings crunched under her gauntlet as dematerialization energy swirled around her arm.

"Thermal Detection equipment restored"

That was not exactly what she'd been hoping for. She'd just wasted valuable time, but her hunger for any chance of rebuilding her ice beam had been too much. Then the hunting metroid's shriek blasted from right outside and Samus' internal monologue dissolved from musings on the threat of greed into a stream of pure repeated profanity. A second later a wall exploded inwards and even profanity blinked out of her mind.

Samus dropped to the floor amid falling shattered fragments and her first charged blast struck from below to deflect the charging metroid up and over her. Samus flipped up from the ground and sprang off the back wall as the creature swerved in the air and darted back, slamming into the floor where she'd been half a second earlier. This thing was too fast, too maneuverable. And Samus had no way to really hurt it.

Then her world suddenly blinked dark. In the half second it took her to process what had happened she was blind and then glowing red orbs over sparking electric prongs flew down towards her. Samus just barely dodged that, the metroid's attack, even as another glancing strike against her armor sent pain stabbing through her core. Samus rolled to her feet as she tapped her helmet at the temple to restoring her normal vision. The thermal visor had just randomly turned on at a moment that could well have killed her. But now her sight had returned and she could see the metroid circling around through the air up near the pipe covered ceiling, preparing for another dive from among the vents and conduits. It was taking its time now. It had learned from her dodging tactics and was now limiting her options. They were always so uncomfortably quick to adapt.

Then, even as Samus was charging up another high energy blast from her power beam, the world blinked into blue and red again. Whatever was wrong with the suit, Samus was now ready for this glitch and she kept track of the creature above her even as most of it faded from view leaving only the metroid's central nuclei and hungering fangs glowed an angry red against a backdrop of bright yellow electric cables and dark purple cooling vents. And then there was that one stripe across the ceiling that was pure dripping black. Samus managed to switch her vision back again but as she did so she still saw condensation fog boiling off the surface of the liquid nitrogen pipe like clouds from a peak. It looked like hope.

Then the metroid struck from above. This time Samus couldn't dodge quickly enough but she managed to thrust out her power beam, meeting its thunderous descent barrel to mouth. Claws locked down around her upper arm with terrible strength even as she unloaded a full power charge beam attack at point blank to the metroid's central maw. The thunderclap blast managed to stun the creature for almost half a second even as claws pierced through armor into Samus' bicep as though the Chozo metal was scrap tin. Then came the pain, all encompassing and blinding as the metroid began attempting to disintegrate her suit's shields and her own cellular makeup at the same time. Colors flashed as the nerves in her eyes spasmed in random activation while her half-consumed right hand kept firing an endless stream of energy blasts into the metroid's underbelly. She might have been screaming. She couldn't tell.

But even as half seen warnings flashed in her visor, Samus gathered herself and crouched down beneath the metroid's thrashing, crushing force. Necrotic electricity sparked across her body, racing down from the fangs. She had enough strength for just one more move before bone and metal both gave way to the universe-destroying pain.

She roared in fury and jumped straight up into the ceiling.

The metroid completely ignored the smashing impact against a heavy metal pipe and continued eating her. However, it could not ignore the frothing torrent of liquid nitrogen that splashed across its transparent shell when that pipe burst. A scream more terrible than any before shook the room as Samus fell down to the floor, her armored back thudding off the hard corner of a workstation.

The metroid flung back and slammed against the far wall, a thin ice shell growing on suddenly discolored, warped flesh. Samus rose to her knees as her gun thudded out a single missile shot, wreathed in shimmering energy. The creature was blinded, and as the explosion went off against its terrible wound it spun off through the air. The metroid staggered across the lab, smashing through machinery and desks in its maddened state. Samus raised her scarred and pitted gun for another shot and clicked down on the trigger. Nothing happened. It seemed all those flashing damage alerts in her visor had finally caught up with the action. A few yards away the metroid roared in now indescribable hunger, ready to exact vengeance on the entire world for its pain. Glass trembled and shattered, then an orange metal hand gripped down onto its largest dangling fang. Samus threw with all her strength, not letting go for a second as she smashed the creature back through the roiling waterfall of freezing nitrogen. The cold touched her hand too and Samus joined in the metroid's screaming but she slammed the creature down into the floor at the frothing terminus as the pain in her hand drove out even her instinct to breath. Spasmed tendons couldn't let go and the only thought remaining to her was her weapon-covered right arm punching down unto the metroid's ice wounded shell, over and over with all her strength.

Blood flecks covered her visor as the vessels in her eyes burst from the metroid's sparking retribution, but still her arm came down, again and again like a massive hammer. Then, finally, Samus' shattered mind reformed enough to notice that her world of pain was no longer expanding. Her impacts slowed and she saw that the gun now slid through a shattered hole in the metroid's carapace, down into the destroyed slush of its former core. The creature was dead.

The suit took the energy of its passing and even as Samus staggered to her feet it began to execute some crucial repairs. The armor around her arms glowed faintly as some of the most crippling damage began to shift and rearrange. Painkillers flooded her system and this time Samus didn't even try to argue. In that final struggle, half her body had been in that stream of liquid nitrogen and inside the armor her flesh dealt with that kind of cold no better than the metroid's. She was so tired. Her arms hung limply at her sides, completely out of her conscious control in her current state. Her feet moved and Samus wasn't sure if that was her doing or an automatic action of the suit. But the glowing line to the rendezvous point with Aurora still traced along the map and she was following it.

A thought drifted across her chemical addled brain. That had been a juvenile metroid; not even done with its first form's growth. That was the least possible threat on this planet and she was almost dead from fighting it.

The final facility door gave way after a second impact and burst open with a snap of metal bolts. Samus staggered outside into the bright sunlight. Around her, clean white sidewalks and well tended planters of native foliage taunted her in the broad open spaces between the hulking Research buildings. Everything looked so normal, like a university campus on any number of human worlds. Shadows of the long connecting bridges between some of those buildings criss-crossed the ground as Samus saw the sun was dipping into afternoon. A breeze still blew across the dusty ground.

Her head twitched to the side as the suit detected an unexpected energy signature. Even that little motion sent a spasm down her back, but Samus didn't let that compromise her guard. The target was almost ninety yards away and Samus took an even longer path, edging around a slight hill of higher elevation to get the best firing line. Belatedly, her shock-addled brain remembered that the suit's weapons were temporarily down for repairs after the metroid fight, but it turned out that mistake didn't matter. The energy signature and faint transmission were coming from one of the Pirate's mysterious missiles turned drop pods.

The strange craft jabbed out of the ground like a knife thrust down into the earth. The middle section was open and exposed, panels flung back to expose a void in the center of the missile, space for the living cargo. It was empty. Samus moved forward cautiously, although both scan and thermal said there was no life anywhere nearby. She stopped beside the missile pod, one foot up on the rim of tiny crater its fall had left in the soft soil. There were sturdy circular rings mounted the pod's frame and on the open doors. They looked like restraints.

What had been chained inside here? This had clearly landed hours ago, the wind had swept free all the light dust the impact would have kicked up, and left a faintly spreading trail of grit reaching from the crater edges. So this wasn't one of the those she'd seen fly overhead a little while ago. Was this how the Pirates had initiated the metroid attack? Suit scan gave back nothing. Some carbon-based traces but nothing that could leave a genetic signature. There was also some faint damage to the metal, scratches and dents that might match a thrashing metroid's pattern as well as a bit of corrosive pitting.

The wind kicked up again as Samus stepped back from the strange landing site. In the distance she heard the strange whistling moan of the upper canyons again. It sounded like music, lost and sad. A dirge for a world twice dead. Her fist clenched even as that motion sent pain though her badly injured nerves and tendons. No, this world had not fallen yet. She would not let that happen. Samus turned and made her way across the campus towards the blinking icon on her visor map.

It turned out Aurora's chosen rendezvous point was a small administrative building separate from the looming Research towers that dotted the rest of the facility campus. Apparently Nakamura had forwarded her clearance since these doors slid open with a cheerful chime even as Samus raised her wobbling arm to smash them. So she contented herself with just staggering in, past furniture made in imitation of dark wood and numerous posters celebrating different departments. One of featured a cartoonish figure of a smiling Chozo with huge eyes that thanked people for "chozoing" to follow proper salvage log procedures. It was actually too absurd to be offensive.

Then a final armored door, a thick affair disguised as aged mahogany, graciously swung open and Samus plodded into a large office. A little brass plaque said this room belonged to some type of president. But the only thing Samus focused on was the large computer screen that unfolded along the least cluttered wall.

A blue circle icon appeared on the screen. "Hello, Samus. I am Aurora Unit 926."

Samus slowly fell back into the president's chair. The poor piece of furniture dropped a little bit as some mechanism snapped under her weight but thankfully the rest managed to hold. However, no matter how bad she felt, she could still talk.

"Metroids on-world. Killed the Chozo laboratory shelter. Reproducing."

The little blue circle managed to look shocked and dismayed. "Oh no. How did that happen? I severed all communication between the shelters so that the discovery of one could not lead the Pirate forces to all the others, but I had hoped they had all managed to escape detection. Something must have gone wrong, no metroid should have been able to get inside those protections. It seems our tragedy continues. Thank you for telling me, Samus, I shall update the casualty report accordingly."

Apparently the suit repairs had carried on far enough to restore partial functionality to her power beam because a single shot smashed into the bookshelf on the far wall. Aurora's little circle seemed to flinch. Samus growled from within her helmet. "The metroids. Was it you? Was it the Federation? Get me Nakamura on coms right now."

The blue dot tried to put on a reassuring yet firm tone. "Unfortunately, Commander Nakamura has severed all further communications pending full repairs to the Diomedes. We have reason to believe that the Pirates managed to break our encryption shortly after his last communication with you. But I can assure you, the Galactic Federation is not responsible for these metroids. They emerged shortly after the Pirate Commander Ridley's personal transport landed on the planet. It has taken all my resources to fend them off from my primary location."

Samus remained silent. Her eyes focused on the little dot that suit scan was the room's primary camera. An any sufficiently complex life could feel the press of properly trained mind. A traditional computer wouldn't care about being stared at, but all the strengths of a bio-mind came with their own attendant weaknesses. And Samus was not yet satisfied.

After a moment Aurora spoke again, more intensely and with the slightest hint of desperation. "I am not lying to you. I could not if I wanted to, as that would be in direct defiance of my last orders from Commander Nakamura. Right now you are my only hope for my own survival and the preservation of my five thousand remaining charges. I will help you in any way I can and I will start with giving you all the resources I can spare."

Samus flinched slightly at a sudden noise as another previously hidden panel slid open in the wall beside her. That flinch was a bad sign. Her nerves were shot. Her instincts and training misfiring; this kind of twitching without any clear purpose was never useful. Then the newly exposed wall alcove cycled closed and when it opened there was a glowing power core sitting in it. Samus could have sworn that the suit scan sounded hungry as it analyzed the energy signature it gave off.

Aurora chimed. "I have seven of these lined up for transport to your current location, as well as components my records indicate could be of use to your suit in the event of various scenarios of catastrophic damage. It is in our best interest to return you to operational effectiveness as soon as possible." Aurora spoke and Samus felt some of her distrust begin to flow out of her. Of course she recognized that could also just be the increased painkillers in her blood, but if Aurora was in favor of protecting the remaining colonists then Samus was on her side at least for that. All the other answers could come second. They would still be answered. In due time the truth was always revealed. Truth lay at the end of all roads.

Samus stood up and reached out with her left hand to let the suit start dematerializing the power core while Aurora moved onto tactical matters. A map of floating blue lines suddenly flashed into existence around her, the hologram filling most of the room with a miniature version of the colony's valley. The master-computer's story of the distressingly short defense of the planet came out through hidden speakers, mixing in Samus' ears with the chimes of the suit absorbing power and components.

In the middle of Aurora's speech, a welcome message blinked in Samus' eyes as her maximum shield load continued to tick upwards. "Super Missile capability and Maneuvering Thrusters have been restored"

Samus stared past those words to look at the hologram map of the colony, tracing the web of buildings between ghostlike outlines of the canyon walls. It was like a maze, trapped within steep boundaries even before the valley split into the branching labyrinth of the lava tubes uphill. Still, as battlefields went she had seen worse. And it was not like she could run from this fight no matter what the ground looked like. Then an odd little red icon flashed into existence on the map, just within the marked bounds of the Pirate beachhead area.

She pointed. "What is-"

"Transmission from one of the emergency shelters." All the inflection dropped out of Aurora's synthesized voice. Something else was now occupying a lion's share of the bio-computer's considerable attention. Samus' heart began to beat faster. Aurora said it had cut the hardwired communications so if they could hear this transmission than the Pirates could too. This splinter fleet had shown absurdly competent computing prowess, it would crack the colonial security nearly instantly, which meant the enemy was now looking at this exact same map.

A new voice filled the office, a male human's. "Aurora, this is Shelter Nine! We need help!"

Samus' internal monologue cursed at this person to shut up, remain quiet and hidden but of course that chance had already been lost. The man's transmission continued.

"The shelter's air filters stopped working several hours ago. We tried to hold on for as long as we could but as soon as we broke the shielding seal Space Pirates started moving towards our location. Aurora, Federation soldiers, anyone out there! We need you!" Some indistinct noise happened outside the programed pick-up range of the transmitting microphone. Then the man began to speak again, the sick tones of doom sinking into his voice. "I have to go, they're coming. There are a hundred and fifty three of us here. Children too. Someone help us or...They're coming."

The transmission ended.

Samus was already moving towards the door, suit plotting a route through the upper reaches of the city and determining likely sites that the colonists might hold up. She pushed the pain from her weary limbs out of her mind however the math that remained was unescapable. No matter how fast she ran the Pirates would get to Shelter 9 first. She could only hope that the civilians had enough weapons to stall for even a little bit. Once Samus arrived she should be able to provide quite a significant distraction.

She spat out orders as she punched open the office's false wood doors. "Aurora, reroute the colony distribution network to make overload power surges in that area." Anything to throw even a bit of interference in Pirate sensors, a kink in their plans. "And I demand that you-"

The bio-computer abruptly interrupted, "I am picking up a high strength Space Pirate broadcast. Unencrypted, planetary origin, human standard language."

Samus stopped and closed her mouth, cutting off her former argument. That could wait. The Pirates were not usually a lot for conversation. But this time it didn't look like Aurora was volunteering the audio without prompting. Samus turned to glare at that blue circle on the screen.

"Play it."

The sound was a cacophony of overlaid vocal tracks. The core Pirate species was innately skilled at deciphering simultaneous noise sources so they had an annoying tendency to simply play their translations on the same waveform as the original. However, by now deciphering this mess was second nature to Samus so she didn't bother looking at the transcription Aurora added at the bottom of the screen. She was too focused because this particular auditory chaos was familiar. She recognized that voice growling behind the monotone human standard translation.

"Samus Aran."

Ridley's long reptilian mouth couldn't contort in the required ways to pronounce that name but all the same through spite and fury this one almost managed it. Samus could barely hear the automatic translator program over his gnashing. Her heartbeat seemed to slow. So much for a surprise attack. The Pirates knew she was here on the planet's surface.

A deep rumble of breath vibrated the speakers and then the oddly breathy voice continued, contaminated with wet noises as a long tongue snaked around rows of dagger-like teeth. "Samus Aran. I saw you. I saw you inspecting that launch pod. Have you seen my strategy? Did it give you pleasure? Did it give you fear? You are a killer. You have killed so many of my kind. You kill those who seek the creations of the Chozo, so you destroy them all. But I am a killer too. And your blood-kind is now within my reach. I will kill them. Come, stop me. Come, fight me. I have a secret that you will want to kill me for. Now I will have your power too. Come, and we will each kill what we can kill."

In the silence that followed Samus noticed her left hand was clenched into a fist. At least that motion didn't hurt anymore. Her cellular makeup seemed to be recovering from that metroid attack incredibly quickly compared to previous injuries. That was good news. She couldn't afford any more weaknesses. In hindsight her mistake was obvious. There was a camera in the drop-pod missile; Pirate command taking track of what they'd deployed there. She'd let her pain-addled self stumble into it and thus gave away a crucial tactical advantage. It was an unforgivable mistake and one that those colonists in Shelter 9 might pay for. Ridley was ready for her now.

Her suit volunteered a message across the visor. "The fastest route is laid before you."

So she ran, out of the office and through the empty carpeted halls. Aurora wasn't sounding so chatty anymore so Samus dashed out of the administrative building amid silence and out across the open grounds of the massive Research Center campus. The shielded mass of the enormous central building loomed in the distance, hiding away Aurora and the humans she had managed to save.

Samus ran under clear blue sky. There wasn't any time to be sneaky now, if any airborne hostiles, Pirate or metroid, saw her now she would just have to deal with that. Maybe she could even lead a metroid into the pirate attack squad; cause a little more chaos in their lines. Even if Ridley had deployed the metroids, there was a decidedly poor record for that kind of people actually managing to control what those creatures did once let loose.

Then, just outside the broken and blaster p-scarred gates of the campus front entrance, Samus figured out how Ridley planned on controlling the metroids. Up ahead was another one of the missile pods, but this one had fallen rather recently. Samus stepped over the broken wreckage of defeated colonial security bots, destroyed in whatever first wave of the pirate attack had taken place here, as she moved towards the vertical missile craft that had punched through the pavement to anchor itself like a grotesque statue. This one still had its cargo, and it was still alive.

The low-caste Space Pirate writhed and struggled against the bonds that held it imprisoned in the open hull of the drop pod. Its feet were clamped together below but its wrists were fastened to the open doors, spreading the upper limbs out to the sides until they were nearly wrenched off. But more than the pain, it was fear that sent this unfortunate creature frothing and twisting in the cold breeze. Someone had told it that it was being used as live bait and this Pirate knew full well the horror that entailed.

Samus narrowed her eyes at this tactic with uncomfortably familiar respect, even as she scanned the surrounding area for sign of a potential ambush. Ridley was rarely an idiot and even his cruelty had a sick purpose. Metroids were nearly impossible to control, true, but they were easy to predict. They were motivated by hunger, so a carefully arranged pattern of live sacrifices could easily shepherd them into the desired areas and keep them there until the mission was over. After all, Pirates rarely cared about keeping planets, just staying long enough to loot them thoroughly. After that the metroids could have this world.

Then Samus took one more step forward and the Pirate's head whipped around to spot her. Excretions trailed down from its four eyes and the corners of its mouth but this individual was beyond caring about that. Samus watched its abdominal plates heave as the various lungs panted silently. It wasn't struggling against its bonds anymore, and instead just silently watched the armored warrior that had appeared before it. Samus raised her power beam and the Pirate didn't even blink as she fired. The low power blast landed beside the Pirate's head, smashing the small video sensor hidden there and cutting off Ridley's sight.

The bound Pirate let out a rattling exhalation.

Its fangs and mandibles clicked together as it spoke in its native language. "Death." It sounded almost rapturous. "It has come. It stands before me. I doubted, but they were right. We were right. And so we will be victorious. Glory is ours!" Its eyes closed. "Now I die the most perfect death, and complete the union."

For a brief second Samus just watched the Pirate as it breathed, hanging from its bonds in paradoxical comfort. Then her charged beam attack blasted its head into an organic smear. If Ridley wanted this one to be killed by metroids then Samus would not let that happen. She continued her run across the colony city. After all, her suit could consume life energy almost as well as the metroids and every little bit was needed right now to even the balance. Those colonists were being hunted.

Thoughts and mysteries swirled in her head, even as she tried to banish them. That Pirate in the sacrifice pod had only began to speak after it knew it was cut off from Command. Perhaps there was a reason why that individual had been chosen beyond expendability. An internal conflict or some defect within the Pirate forces could be very valuable. As for what that individual had been saying, well getting access to some Pirate computers might clear some of it up. Samus hoped it would. If now even the Pirates were talking in vaguely ominous mystical riddles she would just about have to scream. She'd thought they were pretty much the only creatures in her life who didn't insist on making speeches to her that way.

The suit displayed a message in her visor. "Your decision to kill was logical."

Samus didn't stop running, but she almost did. The sickening sense of suspicion surged up through her core with the familiar white cold touch of fear. The suit wasn't supposed to offer judgments of her actions. It never had before in all her decades. But ever since she arrived at this planet things had changed. These strange messages had been growing in frequency, and even the standard alerts were now tinged with unusually conversational language. Something had infected the software; some defect had emerged. Her feat pounded down on the pavement as she continued her urgent dash.

She passed through a shadow that stretched across the road. This sun dipped slowly as evening was approaching. Something had welcomed her to this planet; a triggered message. Things had only gotten worse since she woke from the crash. The odd interactions with certain Chozo artifacts; none of it made sense, and none it was reassuring. Her greatest tool, a part of her very identity for most of her life was beginning to rebel against her and all but one possible explanation were very bad. All the alerts were in Chozo language but still she could hope for that faint glimmer. She had ordered the suit to reconstruct a program.

In between breaths, Samus whispered into the helmet's sensors. "Adam, is that you? Are you waking up?"

There was no answer but silence and the sound of blood beating through her ears.

...​

 

[Cuofeng]

Chapter 9: New Gods

...
​

Kiber-2272 scratched his pincer along the seam of his shoulder shellplate. He thought he might be allergic to something on this planet; these itches had started up about an hour after they cracked hatch down here. Of course he could tell his company's genetyrant and most likely get an instant cure tossed his way, but there was also a faint possibility that he could be instantly purged for societal unfitness. 2272 decided that a little itching was probably fine.

With nothing better to do, he walked over to the other side of this building's third floor balcony to look down a different deserted street for a change. This planet's sun was beginning to sink, by now only a few degrees above the canyon wall. Guard duty was boring; he and his squad were missing the forage for those humans that had just popped up somewhere inside the security zone. 2272 puffed his chest out a few quick times, hyperventilating a bit to stave off torpor. Being stuck in one place meant there was no chance of looting anything that might earn him even a little bit of rank. Then he glanced over at Zegar-1161 who was squatted down beside their post's little energy barrier projector, looking out the hole they'd blown in the exterior wall to get an extra firing line. 1161 had been out on a different roving team earlier in the landing. Then that team had been eaten, so 1161 got reassigned here.

Maybe guard duty wasn't so bad.

2272 paced back to his original position as he felt his metabolism kick up to combat the falling temperature. If this human building had a purpose originally, 2272 couldn't decipher it. There were just a lot of little rooms of various sizes, all filled with soft rectangles of different sizes and configurations. Out on the balcony with 2272 there was a little table with a little green plant in a glass dome. He leaned close and tapped the glass as he looked at the feathery little leaves.

"Hey, 1161, why do you think the humans put a plant in a cage? What, did they think it might escape?"

"I think that dome's full of atmosphere that's more healthy for the plant."

"What? Why wouldn't they just re-gene it until it can survive here? They were on this planet for years. I know the humans are advanced enough to manage a little genetic redesign."

1161 made a shrugging gesture with his head. "Don't ask me. I heard other species sometimes have a weird preference for unmodified organisms."

2272 tapped the glass dome again. "Huh. Crazy."

Suddenly coms lit up and a nearby transmission sounded through both their skull implants. "Watch-post seven-alpha to seven-beta, glass tapping noise detected near your location. Report now to cancel incoming mortar strike!"

"No, no!" 2272 frantically clawed at his arm panel. "That was me! No mortar strike! No mortar!"

"Report acknowledged, strike canceled" A moment of silence followed where 2272 tried to stop vibrating with tension and relief. Then the voice in his head came back, with a bit of disappointment about missing the chance to shell his squad mates. "Tapping on glass is not one of your designated duties. This deviance will be logged on your gene line."

2272's head was now resting on his pincers. "Yes. Thank you for your societal vigilance. Post seven-beta out."

Across the room, 1161 was still watching him from the same crouched position by the shield generator. 2272 now noticed that the generator's default projection trajectory had been re-aimed down through the wall at their own forces instead of out at the enemy territory. That was probably for the best. 1161 clicked his mandibles and muttered:

"That guy's a jerk."

2272 clacked his own pincers together in a vague message of agreement that didn't actually go far enough to meet the definitions of societal treason like 1161's comment did. 1161 might still be within the seventeen hour mental grace period for survivors of squad slaughter, but that didn't mean everyone could join in on that kind of dangerous talk. After all, old Kiber-2333 was still strung up to the ceiling above their alpha post just for nodding to the last grumble within squad leader's hearing. If 2272 leaned out far enough on this balcony he could see a few of 2333's limbs tied to a few of those pillars. 2272 also hoped that the dripping he could just barely make out on those stretched joints was bio-coolant and not blood. That guy had been fun to talk with when they pulled duties together. At least he didn't whisper about the two gods all the time like a lot of the old timer Kiber clan folks did.

The sun was almost set now, down over the east cliffs, and 2272's post was looking right into it. However, this was still that awkward time of day where he couldn't quite switch over to augmented vision modes without ending up even more blind than he currently was. So he just flexed his exoskeleton again and continued trying to pick out the difference between dead black building shadows and open streets lit with burning red shafts of light.

After a few more chilly minutes, 1161 spoke up again. "Those god-painters made another picture back behind our lines."

Despite himself, 2272 flinched at that conversational voice, still on edge from the mortar threat. He said, "Yeah, I saw it during the last squad cycle." A simple report of personal experience, a completely valid and unthreatening utterance. He glanced down at his arm panel and wondered if there was a way to quietly see if it was transmitting any sort of monitoring data to the genetyrants.

1161 continued to talk in his same slow way, somehow managing to hunch down on his heels even further. "There are more of the painters in recent months." Also true and therefore safe, though the statistics here were getting dangerously hard to prove with scientific accuracy. Conversational audits were a dangerous headache. However, apparently 1161 didn't care about that. "They've taken what we found out in space as a sign that the fleet's on a deterministic mission. That the cube, and the thing was in it were the start." He paused and looked over. "Do you think they could be right about it?"

That was a question: danger, danger! Unscientific superstitious consideration! Even a mental grace period couldn't excuse that kind of talk if it got logged. 2272 started to hyperventilate, his thorax shifting in and out as all his air intakes gasped. But then other thoughts filtered into his head. He'd heard this kind of talk before around the fleet members. And the number of science-heresy punishments he'd seen meted out didn't even come close to the number of offenses in even his own personal experience. Could leadership be going light on that doctrine, letting the god-painters slide? Oh no, even that thought was hearsay! But wait, if they actually weren't enforcing the doctrine then doubting their enforcement wouldn't be hearsay, right? Or would it...

Kiber-2272 pressed his head against his pincers again. This planet was going to drive him crazy. At least up on the ship there were too many of his clan for the small number of tasks so most of the time he could just find a nice bit of wall to crawl up and hang on to sleep for a few days. Now he had to sit here looking out at this empty city and listen to this Zegar clan reject try to get him purged. All the humans were dead or hiding, so it was just hours of watching wind and dust and that rocking streak of burning light that was racing towards the alpha post.

Wait, come again?

The violent explosion rocked the entire building. Shards of cement and metal blasted across the balcony, pinging off 2272's plates even as a few slivers found joints to bite into. Too late his instincts kicked in and 2272 ducked down behind the railing, just in time to limit his view of the walls around alpha post slowly crashing down.

1161's shield generator was now humming, the glowing purple barrier facing the completely wrong direction towards their back lines. "I knew it!" he yelled with inappropriate triumph. "They're shelling us! That mismatched mutant's had it out for all of us and now he's had a complete programing breakdown!"

2272's vision was slowly refocusing after the blast's pressure wave. Shock was also beginning to wear off and let the pain signals through. Ow. He grunted, "No, it wasn't a mortar-"

"They said I was showing behavior fault with illogical distrust of authority! But I knew! I was-"

"No! That wasn't us! It was..." 1161's memories of a second ago swirled, a distant figure briefly glimpsed. Something running towards them. "Orange!"

1161 slowly swiveled on his crouched heels to look over. "Orange," he slowly repeated. Then another huge missile explosion rocked their building, sprouting cracks through the exterior walls. People were now firing blaster shots over in alpha post. There was a lot of yelling. "Um, what...?"

A string of smaller explosions went off like a staccato drumbeat. One of them knocked a hole in the far wall, carrying a bit of floor down with it and giving both guards a clear view down into alpha post. The whole place was blown up or on fire, but now they could see why.

"Oh," 1161 said.

She was killing everyone. The six foot tall orange and red metal destroyer danced and jumped, her arm letting out a never ending stream of brilliant death. It was that Hunter, and she was here. 2272 had a thought drift past his mind that this really wasn't fair. No one had even told him she was in this star system. But combat conditioning kicked in against all conscious thought and he opened his pincers, tentacles reaching up to fire the grafted blaster guns. To his own surprise one of his shots actually almost hit her. But then that right hand of doom turned his way and a hail of response fire smashed through Beta Post.

Off to his left he saw 1161 fling backwards and flop down to the ground, limbs sprawled and twisted. 2272 huddled behind a corner of reinforced wall, still firing off wild blaster shots down towards alpha post even if two of his eyes were squeezed closed and there were a faint high-pitched shriek coming from his mouth that absolutely could not be mistaken for a battle cry. Then the explosions started again and he just leaped up onto the nearest wall and clung there shaking like a newly shed pupa above a hungry larva bed. His face was pressed flat to the off-white paint so he could only see flashes of angry light as booms and shudders sent everything trembling around him.

Then there was one last crash of breaking cement and 2272 felt his bit of wall begin to slowly tip forward as he clung to it. The wall fell and then it hit something hard, followed by a grinding bouncing slide which carried 2272 down some rough slope head-first. The jostling stopped with an abrupt thud that almost almost shook him off. However, through all this he simply refused to move, still clinging to his little patch of wall in a hunched ball. The shooting had stopped, but there was the sound of armored human boots rushing towards him. 2272 closed all his eyes, but then those boots continued running on by.

Several minutes later 2272 finally felt capable of looking up from his little bit of wall. The off-white panel was now lying at the bottom of a rubble pile that used to make up the right wall of alpha post's landing and the left half of beta post's building. 2272 was shaking and trembling but from the look of everyone else around here that was the absolute best he could have hoped for. Part of old Kiber-2333 was still hanging from the ceiling, but only part.

Then up on their old third floor post Zegar-1161's corpse flipped back up to his feet and both 2272's hearts nearly went into fibrillation.

Zegar-1161 casually called down, "Hey Kiber, is the coast clear?"

Once 2272 confirmed that he was not in fact dying of shock he yelled back up, "What...?! I thought you were dead!"

"Nope! Just flopped over so she stopped shooting at me. Seemed sensible at the time."

"But...But...That's the most flagrantly treasonous...!" 2272 stopped sputtering as he belatedly realized that his own actions weren't much better. If this went up for review the genetyrants would be purging both of them. So he just sighed. "You're not hurt?"

"Yeah, no. I considered cutting between some of my plates to let a little bleeding sell the performance since there weren't any bodies nearby to swipe some blood from, but I figured that would take too much movement."

"...How exactly did you survive your previous squad wipe?""

1181 shrugged as he scrambled down the scree slope of partially collapsed building. "Eh, just lucky I guess."

2272 started walking off and then jerked back as he realized he was stepping in the burning remains of one if his own squadmates. That organ wasn't even supposed to be flammable. Lucky, the guy said. 2272's head hurt.

1161 moved over to stand next to him as they both looked out the open back of ruined alpha post, through the streets claimed as official staging territory. "So, should we call that in?"

A white flash and a thudding boom rang out in the distance deeper in the secure territory. 2272 glanced down at his arm panel. It was blinking furiously "I think they know already. Best to leave comm channels open. You know, for important orders and things."

1161 glanced over to his side and bent down to pick something up out of the rubble. His tentacles stuck to a little glass dome and lifted it up in his pincer. "Hey, Kiber! Your plant survived!"

That was when 2272 decided to just start walking off into the distance.

...​

Samus stuck to corners and overhangs, knowing better than to trust the evening shadows to hide her from enemies who would almost certainly have thermal scans. Her attack on that guard post should send things scrambling and hopefully buy the colonists some time in the confusion. The Space Pirates loved their schemes and plans but they didn't tend to deal well with a sudden disruption thrown into the middle of it. Samus wasn't one to boast, but she was quite widely recognized as the biggest disruptor in this galactic arm and there was an extensive record, both military and legal, to prove that. If she made a big enough fuss here, caused enough damage, Ridley wouldn't be able to resist diverting all his forces to put down this threat to his authority.

She just hoped it would be enough.

This whole corner of the city showed the unmistakable signs of Pirate despoliation. Here, where the colony valley narrowed into the mouth of the lefthand volcanic canyon, every building had been scarred. The windows were smashed, doors ripped off, and piles of treasured belongings lay broken in the streets where the raiding squads had thrown them in their search for valuable equipment. At least now that she was past that first security checkpoint she was in a belt of no-man's land. The Pirates' main landing and staging point was somewhere up that canyon, in an open patch of land a safe distance away from this tangle of colony streets. The suit had briefly spotted at least two ships and some unloaded machinery during Samus' fall from orbit.

That is, if she could trust the suit's report anymore. Samus felt dread sink through her veins even as she ran. This planet was doing something; there was some power at work here and it was touching more than just her. It felt like prophecy. Three species, all now wielding Chozo technology, had come here to fight among the old masters' broken leavings. Another part of Samus' mind noted that she had just counted herself as a species separate from humanity, but there wasn't anything to do about that right now other than add that to the long list of things she should probably discuss with a professional at some point. By now it was a very long list.

Samus glared at the world as she darted across a street for more cover, avoiding a Pirate transmission signal she'd just picked up over in the other direction. She couldn't afford this lack of focus. Not now. There was a mission. She couldn't be shaken. That would mean death, for her and thousands of others. No, death was not something to fall victim to, it was hers to deal out.

Then she glanced up to see a crude skull painted on the building wall right in front of her. Her eyebrow raised. Now that was just excessively atmospheric for her inner monologue.

And it made no sense. Scan said this paint was only a few hours old, placing completion long into the Pirate occupation. The image, however rough, was clearly a human skull but there was no way any colonist was running around the streets to do some graffiti. An average GF trooper probably wouldn't be surprised, putting the death-symbol down as some pirates partaking in a standard type of warrior artwork found in any occupation. Humans had been doing the same for their whole history, against whatever enemy they fought. But the Pirates weren't human. They didn't make art. That instinct was purged from their society in the interest of scientific supremacy.

No, this was something else. Samus touched the fingers of her left hand to the wall as she followed the trails of irregular black paint that led back within this block. She remembered the Command Ship up in orbit. She remembered rough bipedal figures colored onto those walls. These Pirates were different.

Very different. Samus emerged into the back alley and her breath caught as she saw a thousand paintings covering every surface. Some were abstract, some were snatches of Pirate writing, and some were clearly meant to represent some particular Pirate clan body type. Nearly everything was in simple black, however here and a while there was a small mark of blue, or a single line of red. An experiment in color? Above this all, someone had knotted endless sheets of torn cloth into crude patchwork canopies stretching across the alley in multiple layers wherever they could find a pipe, window, or ledge to attach it too. Down at ground level it was like being in a painted cave. Far above, stars began to appear as the sun set through the thin atmosphere.

Samus knew she didn't have time for this. She needed to be running now, to find those desperate colonists before the Pirate forces did. But despite the urgency this was a mystery and she could feel every instinct of her mind fighting her better reason. There was a meaning here, something screaming at her and she just couldn't see it. This was important.

The next painted figure was tall and hunched, with long delicate fingers on huge hands. Samus recognized that: Chozo. The Pirates were drawing pictures of Chozo, sanding and kneeling, alternating above the Pirates and beneath them. There was more writing here, crudely scrawled but still legible. Samus could make out the scattered words. "Death", "Change", and "Beginning". Then there was something new, a word in Pirate script that neither she nor the suit's memory banks recognized. It looked like "death-supreme-physics-commander". The only translation Samus could think of was "god". The Pirates didn't have any word for such an idea; the very concept was highest heresy. Or at least it had been.

Then the city's electric lights flicked on, bright illumination suddenly throwing striped of dense shadow as the remaining colony grids flipped into their night mode. Sickly orange light filtered down to the painted alley from higher bulbs. In this new atmosphere the paintings abruptly changed before Samus' eyes. Directly in front of her, on a solid wall at a T-intersection, a dense maze of black paint suddenly faded from focus in favor of what was not painted. The darkness highlighted the space between the lines instead of the drawings themselves. Samus stepped forward and to her horror she could read that absence of paint. Hidden within the crude abstract drawing was a white space forming single perfect Chozo word.

It said, "Rise".

Samus' proximity radar lit up. Multiple targets; movement everywhere around her. She raised her gun and spun, only to see heat signatures register in every doorway and shadow. Pirates, at least ten of them to both her left and right. Samus gritted her teeth; she'd let herself wander into a trap. A single second had elapsed and, the foremost of them had only just begun to make their first motions but a cruel radiance was already building in the barrel of Samus' weapon. In that glacial moment before combat all her doubts and recriminations cooled and crystalized into the calm and perfect clarity of battle. Samus breathed out. This she understood.

The closest Pirate raised a small glowing blade in one clawed fist. Samus raised her gun. Then the Pirate smoothly sliced off its own hand.

Despite herself, Samus froze. That was not something she'd been ready for. Within that dearly bought second the injured Pirate fell down to its knees, and behind it all the fellows toppled too in a sweeping wave. They were kneeling, exposing their necks to their most deadly enemy and behind her Samus could hear the other group following suit, falling into abject genuflection. She could feel her own heartbeat echoing in her ears. Something very wrong was happening here. A thin trickle of bloody ichor slowly made its way across the cement towards her boot.

"Hunter." The word crackled and chirped out in the Pirates' language. That was what they called her; the title their kind had awarded her many years ago. One Pirate slowly rose, head still down, and slowly pushed away its mutilated comrade. This pirate stayed half crouched, always aiming the back of its neck at Samus' weapon as it shuffled.

"It was sung you would be here. The end must always be at the beginning."

All the varied motley of Pirates slowly began to back up while still staying low, claws and exoplates scratching against the cement. Behind her, Samus could hear the other group doing the same down the other alley. She took a step forward, her weapons still ready to blow the nearest three pirates to shreds if they twitched but still she did not fire. Pirates never trusted prophecy. And they didn't sing. The entire species had been under supreme order for decades to kill the hunter Samus Aran on site and yet this particular group was bowing before her. Confusion was like a burning itch in Samus' brain. She had to understand. She had to know.

The Pirates continued, "Escape is at hand. We will follow the angels."

Samus stopped before a new set of paintings and all of a sudden many things became terribly clear. There were two humanoid figures side by side: one red and one blue. Their shoulders were oversized globes and each only had fingers on their left hand. An angular slit served them both for eyes and the right arm was a cylinder. Each stood on a throne of scrawled metroid bodies. Samus recognized these paintings; that outline. It was the suit. It was her.

The hissing and clicking grew as more joined in. "Science is dead and entropy is the killer! But we will escape!"

Beside the blue painting were rough images of Pirates, hands outstretched to grab the blue lines that came off that Samus. By the red figure were only skulls. In the alley the Pirates' cacophony grew into something like chanting. The pirate language didn't have a word for good or evil. Science was their only good, entropy the ultimate evil. But their species had been broken by Phazon, twisted by a mutagen and then abandoned to assault, defeat, and blockade. And Samus realized that only one of these two paintings was actually her. The blue copy was her dark Phazon clone, the mother of the Pirates' recent brief ascendancy. It seemed they still worshiped her, even in destruction.

Samus was their devil, and she had won. The god of Phaaze was dead and in that fall these withdrawn addicts had found some new focus, a new drug. In the absence of god they had found religion. And now they wrote a single word in Chozo script over and over between the marks of paint.

"Rise" a hundred times across the walls.

Well, if she was the demon then she might as well play the part. Samus raised her weapon and it made faint humming noises as the metal and crystal structure shifted into missile mode. This strange cult was a dangerously chaotic force thrown into the middle of this crisis. It was even possible that they had been the ones who'd release the metroids, since they painted them on the walls. Were the metroids the angels the cult would follow? But even if the cult caused confusion and violence among the Pirate forces it wasn't worth it to allow them to live. A predictable enemy was more valuable. Ridley might even thank her for eliminating these wretches, underneath his overwhelming rage at another offense of course.

As if it could hear her thoughts, the nearest pirate chittered and inched forward, pressing his head nearer to Samus' right arm; nearer its oncoming destruction.

A sudden motion warning chirped on the suit's sensors: big, and high above. Samus whipped her weapon up in time to spot a tiny gap in the roofs and overhanging fabric canopies. A small patch where the stars above briefly blinked out in a rush of black wind. Her first thought was a ship, but that was wrong. It was the shadow of enormous wings. Ridley was on the move, racing past her off into the distance. He was heading towards the transmission site.

Samus slammed through the cultish pirates, shoving one aside hard enough to hear cracking exoskeleton. The others scattered as she began firing a wild stream of quick blasts, still racing out of this damn makeshift temple. Her teeth ground in her head. She was an idiot. She'd let her curiosity draw her away from the mission and she'd done so even as she knew it was happening. She'd abandoned innocent lives for some paltry mystery. Unforgivable.

She burst out onto the street and her boots scraped across the pavement as the took the ninety degree turn. Her charged blaster shot tore off a burning path into the night sky, aimed at Ridley's trajectory but in fact just a desperate attempt to grab his attention. No one fired back or acknowledged her. The distant shadow was already racing off, too fast and ever lower as it came in for a landing behind a far off building. Samus screamed as she ran down the silent street, and then cursed herself still more for wasting oxygen her muscles needed. The suit was still damaged and she was still so slow, barely passing thirty miles per hour. The little destination icon approached at a glacial creep.

The the colonist distress broadcasts began again, leaping out on all frequencies.

"Oh god! Help up! They're-!"

Then the transmission quality dropped and all that could be heard was shouting and screams over static.

...​

Samus entered the building's shattered front entrance to the music of terrible silence. Fires were still burning on furniture near the air system vents, where the interior air had enough oxygen to encourage growth. Her footsteps crunched across the trail of devastation, over shards of broken columns and past the gouges dug through the corridors. Each door was ripped off its hinges; blasted by fire, lasers, or simply incredible strength. They were the signs of a huge creature moving through a building designed for a much smaller species.

Then, on the next floor, the blood began.

Suit scan picked up defensive marks, and Samus saw the signs of intelligently placed firing positions. These colonists had fought well and bravely. The defense had lasted for sixteen seconds.

She entered a large carnage strewn room with a high round ceiling. She noted that several of the door in here had their locks shot off from this side, as if there had been multiple locked escape routes which were pursued by Pirate forces. It was still possible a few of the humans had managed to get away. It was their city after all, they knew it better than the invaders. They might be able to hide.

But Samus did not follow those trails. Instead she simply stood amid the scattered gore in this wide main room. She was staring the hole that had been torn in the building side: an exit wound where the Pirate commander had decided he wanted quick access to the sky. Beside it was a remaining intact wall, oddly pristine and undamaged save for the huge words painted there. Samus' emotions were deadened, she was no longer astonished by the Pirates' artwork. The blood had not even had time to darken yet.

The message was painted and gouged in equal measure, as if applied by massive sharp claws. It was in human standard script, a courteous gesture. It said, "You were late."

...​

The escape path Samus chose to follow first turned out to be an unlucky one. These humans hadn't made it farther than three hundred yards before the five of them were gunned down in a stairwell. There were two more paths back at the massacre site that she needed to check, but Samus instead found herself exiting the blackened and bloody stairs. She slowly walked out onto an undamaged balcony. Cold wind brushed the suit's metallic skin. The night was dark, though two of the planet's small moons were currently making their orbits. A few undamaged streetlights shone up from the street below.

Off in the distance at the upper edge of the colony city, between two taller buildings, Samus could just barely see an open space shining with blinding white lights. From the blackened ground there she supposed that it might have been a park originally, some green space at the mouth of this canyon's narrowing, but now it was a burned and ashy secondary Pirate staging ground. There were some forces moving supplies and machinery around out there, thought too far for scan to give many precise details. She had a firing line from here. Of course their mortars would reduce this building to rubble shortly after, but there were always choices. Where there was life there was choice.

Then a thundering sound rolled out over the valley's cliff-made horizon like the growling roar of a distant furnace. All of a sudden, the blighted city shuddered further under an earsplitting boom. Samus didn't need the suit's sensors to analyze that for her. That was the sound of a ship rapidly decelerating after a top speed drop from orbit, its speed-of-sound wavefront finally catching up to the destination. But as always, sound was too slow. The new shadow already hung in the air over the edge of the canyon wall, moving smoothly against the bright clear stars behind it.

Samus watched the ship uneasily as it slowly descended towards the burned park where the Pirates had cleared their secondary landing area. The air still thrummed with the sound of those distant engines. The ship was big, far bigger than Samus would have expected to land given how afraid of Diomedes the fleet seemed to be. Something important was being transported in there, something that that needed to happen now rather than later. And yet it was landing here in the city, instead of at the main staging area with Ridley's ship. Strange.

She pressed against the walls of her hiding place, knowing that if she was detected now it would be her death along with everyone on the planet who was depending on her. Her curiosity had already cost too much today, but she still needed to know what the Pirates were doing. That was the only way she could destroy them. And she would, one by one until this planet was once more purged off all who had set foot here.

Samus couldn't see the ship once it landed behind those buildings, but the commotion she could see moving around down there in the burned park suggested that the main exit hatch was somewhere just out of view. She should be able to see what they offloaded. Sure enough a small platoon of guards formed up and a moment later clouds of ash and dust billowed up in the spotlights as pressurized air blasted from of the out of view ship. First into view was a stomping squad of armored Elites. Samus had been right, this was something important.

Then her heart stopped beating. The next far off figure walked into view alone, made tiny by the distance. All the same Samus recognized the shape instantly. There was no way that she could not. The slightly hunched posture, the long robes, and enormous hands; a living Chozo shuffled along behind the armed Pirate Elites.

A silent roar was surging in Samus' ears, deafening her thoughts. The lone impossible Chozo was marched along, followed by the watch of a full platoon of massive battle droids who followed behind, weapons trained. Then the prisoner detail crossed that sliver of Samus' view and were gone. Samus was left in the dark and the starlight.

It was impossible. The Chozo were gone; vanished, departed. The last vestigial trace of that long fallen empire and had been lost decades ago. Every space-faring race in this galactic arm had been hunting for any clue and had found nothing to explain it. She had found nothing. Thirty years since she'd seen the last living members, and across the galaxy she'd only found statues, bones, and ghosts. The entire fading race had simply left, off to their mysterious new journey. All that remained were machines, carved prophecy, and one half-breed hatchling wandering around their discarded leavings.

It was impossible, and yet a living Chozo had just walked in front of her. That was what the Pirates had found. Somewhere out in space this fleet of cultists and madmen had stumbled onto the trail of the departed Chozo masters. That mysterious cube on the Command Ship hadn't been empty, it had been exited. The Pirates didn't need to rip apart old technology when they had a captive they could enslave to make new.

Peaceful certainty returned to Samus' mind. This was a clear purpose. Everything in her existence had led her to be perfectly situated in this one moment. She would rescue this prisoner and die or live in the process. There were no decisions to be made here. She tilted her helmet to look off over her right shoulder. The visor's enhancements sliced through the dark night and so she could clearly see the head of the distant mountain statue just barely preening over the north canyon wall. Somewhere in her memory, her adopted family were nodding their approval.

These pirates would learn once more to fear the wrath of the Chozo.

Samus took one step back and a tiny icon blinked in the corner of her vision. It was a transmission; a new transmission. It was faint, and garbled from bouncing off canyon walls, but it was there.

A voice broke in, small and scared and unmistakably human. "Hello? Aurora Unit? I...I need help. We got away but... but my mom's hurt. We ran to the Ruins, the Chozo place, past the locked door. Everyone else...We're hiding. I went somewhere else to make this call but...I need you to find me. There are things out there. Someone? Please. I'm Roger. Help."

Then the signal was gone and Samus stood alone in the dark.

...​

 

[Cuofeng]

Chapter 10: True Nature


...​

Strands of Samus' long blonde hair blew into her eyes but she ignored them. Both her hands were currently occupied gripping into the black basalt rock face, bare fingers white and red with that precious rasp of pain which meant she still had grip. Her half-covered limbs trembled but each inch up this rough cliff face was another bit of triumph, so she breathed deep and could barely remember the years when this acidic air had burned her lungs. In the distance, dark clouds rolled in over the hills, creeping up to strangle the sun. Clouds meant rain, and here on Zebes that rain meant death for anything without a diamond carapace.

Of course those sharp rocks thirty feet beneath her also meant death, so Samus continued to climb. A heavy bracelet of bulbous metal hung off each forearm, sliding and shifting awkwardly with every movement she made. They were very inconvenient and made this climb much more difficult, but they were her weapons so Samus kept them on, even as they jangled on her skinny forearms. Her muscles burned slightly from exertion but that lay over a more persistent gentle ache in her bones these days that came whenever she sat still. Samus guessed that ache had something to do with growing; she'd been getting a lot taller recently even though that meant all her limbs were really skinny now. Sometimes she thought she might be eleven years old now, but she tried not to think like that.

That was how humans thought.

Up here on the cliff, a thin rock ledge allowed Samus space to fit both her feet if she lined them up just right so she crouched down and caught her breath as she balanced with one hand gripping a stone crack. She was almost at the top. She'd need her strength up there.

Casually perched on the sheer cliff like a nesting falcon, Samus reached around her head to re-catch the stray bits of hair which had slipped free from their ponytail prison. That done, she smoothly sprang up from the little ledge to grab a just out of reach handhold. Her palm came down on target and the grip was good but Samus abruptly realized that the rock lip was a lot sharper than it had looked from below. The broken rock was edged like a knife. Her whole weight came down on that hand and a gasp of pain burst out her lungs.

Samus' teeth pressed together in a rictus as she had no choice but to hold tight and swing a dangling foot up for another purchase before she could mercifully release some of the blade-like pressure on her palm. Her other hand found a crack and she could lift the throbbing hand to inspect it. There were only a few spots of blood, though her fingers were trembling and refused to fully extend. It was a good thing the Chozo had made her skin harder to cut. Something about things in her body making a pattern of carbon. They still used a lot of words she didn't know.

Old Bird had advocated the procedure over Grey Voice's hesitance, saying that Samus didn't have enough blood in her little body to lose as much as she insisted on doing through the constant falls, scrapes, and bite wounds of childhood. Well, he'd somehow managed to say something to that effect, even though Samus had heard just four grunted words. So, despite Grey Voice's hesitance, Samus had gone back in the tank.

She'd wanted them to strengthen her bones at the same time, particularly since that particular tank trip had been first been initiated by her ninth broken arm. Fixing them was getting rather annoying. However, to that Old Bird had just said, "No."

Grey Voice hadn't even said that much but gave her more biology texts to read and put her in a corner for hours of study until it occurred to Samus that growth spurts and unbreakable bones might not mix. The Chozo never bothered to explain anything when they felt she already had the information necessary to deduce it. That was kind of like trust, but it was also very irritating. She'd gone hungry for days back when Grey Voice had abruptly stopped preparing food for her. Samus supposed she should have been paying better attention to what labor went into her sustenance, but she still thought keeping the raw ingredients on a twelve foot high shelf was just being intentionally difficult.

After more one surge up the cliff, Samus finally clambered over the last lip onto a broad shelf just below the top of the mountain. The oblong metal bulges on her dangling bracelets scraped and tapped on the black rock as she crawled to her knees. She stayed here for a moment, face to the ground, breathing heavily. Then another sound joined her panting. Samus slowly looked up to see the end of a metal staff tapping on the stone in front of her.

Old Bird looked down at her with faint disapproval. He flicked his eyes over at the sun, indicating that she was late. Of course they were here first, they were always there first. Samus never saw either of the teachers pass her on these trips but no matter what destination they set across the sprawling temple complex from the depths to the peaks, they were always there first without the slightest sign of effort.

Samus just grunted and crouched down at Old Bird's feet as she eyed him suspiciously. She didn't know what today's lesson was and that was never a good sign. Her sore fingers ran over the oversized bracelet on her wrist as she kept her eyes on her teacher. The bracelets were ancient weapons, sized for Chozo warriors twice her height. They could protect her from anything. Samus just wish she had any idea how to make them work or what they did.

She waited.

There. The scrape of metal on stone as Old Bird's staff suddenly whipped into blinding motion. Samus sprang to the side, rolling up as the staff smashed down where she'd just sat, sending out flying shards. Then she jumped up, flipping back as the staff's next swing scourged a long scratch in the black rock beneath her. So, it was one of these lessons. Samus landed, bare feet sliding across the stone. She smiled, she liked these lessons.

The staff flipped and twirled through the air, tricking the eye as it seemed to flex and strike like a serpent. It was an illusion, aided by the way that Old Bird barely seemed to move more than a single hand as he continued his attack. Well, Samus would just have to fix that.

In the middle of the next dodge, she reached down and grabbed a loose rock about the size of her head. She spun and threw it right at Old Bird's chest. He easily stepped away, but that simple motion shifted the mental balance of their conflict. Samus had injected her will into this flow of the universe instead of only reacting. She just wished her arms were a little stronger, she knew that Old Bird could really have just swatted a rock that small out of the air if he wasn't humoring her. But she was still just a kid, even under the best conditions she'd just recently gotten to the point where she could lift an eighty pound weight more than ten times.

The dance up on top of the cliff had entered into a rhythm. Samus panted but she could easily maintain this speed for at least another forty-five seconds, keeping her eye on that flashing, twirling staff. Then the air beside Old Bird shimmered and he suddenly reached out to grab a second metal staff that materialized out of nothing. That new weapon whipped down as Samus realized she was in mid motion, too off balance to dodge this. The tip of the staff crashed down on her hand as it was briefly splayed against the rock during a handspring. The metal hit, and her finger bone snapped.

Pain screamed through her nerves. That was bad. Pain confused reflexes, muddled thoughts even if a single shattered finger was hardly a significant handicap for this kind of challenge. Pain made you predictable. Fighting this, Samus struggled for distance, trying to keep sight on both staffs now. There were tears in her eyes, another unfortunate side effect of pain which made this difficult. Difficult even if Old Bird didn't just then toss one of his staffs up high into the sky and then reach to materialize yet a third weapon out of shimmering air. Samus just had time to wrench her eyes down from the twirling staff when the new threat smashed into her ribs.

Resignation dominated Samus' mind as a cracking sensation signaled a new surge of pain. This lesson was ridiculously uneven, even for Old Bird. She would have even said "unfair" if both her teachers hadn't rigorously impressed in her that such a concept was just another illusion. They'd sent her up this cliff to tire her out, then hidden an entire armory behind the air just for Old Bird to use while Samus only had these stupid bracelets that she didn't even know what they were supposed to...

Oh.

The air shimmered with dancing, shattering light as a new metal staff slid into existence, right as Samus spun past to catch it in her hand. She slid to a stop as she faced Old Bird, panting in defiance of her cracked rib. For at least this moment the pain was thoroughly subsumed beneath exhilaration. Grey Voice had explained the process of retrieving hidden things almost one hundred days ago and Samus was quite astonished that she'd actually remembered it when she thought to look.

She now gripped her new staff in two hands in preparation for her own attack, ignoring the broken finger since she was still too small and weak to twirl the staff in one palm like Old Bird could. But Old Bird did not continue his assault, and instead simply caught his other staff as it came spinning down from the sky. He smoothly gripped all three weapons together in one huge hand and then gestured for Samus to come over. Samus complied, suddenly wincing and gasping as the intensity of the fight vanished to leave only the pain behind. Old Bird held out one of his long fingers, now capped in metal, and ran it down across Samus' cheek and neck. A few heartbeats later the twin pains were pushed back, receding to a forgotten throb.

A rough clicking chirp sounded out behind her and Samus turned to see Grey Voice standing on the mountain too, hunching his shoulders disapprovingly in Old Bird's direction. Grey Voice never liked it when Old Bird broke Samus' bones but Samus flashed back a broad panting smile to show that she was fine. The only thing that resulted in was Grey Voice now disapproving of her in equal measure.

He clicked his beak at Samus as he strode forward. Then he took his position and said, "The heart." It was a question dressed as a command.

Samus easily supplied the answer. "Energy is matter, matter is life, life is thought, and thought is energy. Past and future are the same present. All divisions are an illusion."

Grey Voice didn't give praise for mere recitation, but still Samus could see some of his thin remaining feathers puff up a bit. Old Bird didn't look back at them but he gave a slight cough that might have been a scoff at his companion.

After only a brief glare at his companion, Grey Voice continued, "Just as the past will always exist, so has the future always existed. Any action you take stands on a foundation of those two facts. By examining the present and the past, the future can be just as visible. Surprises like that," he gestured to the staff Samus held. On cue her injuries twinged slightly in sympathy. "...they should not be allowed to occur."

Samus couldn't help grumbling a bit. "It's easier for you. You have a thousand years of past."

As soon as she said it she winced as she knew she was wrong. She'd slipped back into the human way of thinking again: in years and dates and math composed of numbers instead of words. But Grey Voice didn't discipline her, and replied softly after a pause. "Years are a meaningless term. When describing a mind, doubly so. The only true division is marked by when look back on your past and do not recognize the individual making the thoughts in your own head." He flicked a hand out towards Old Bird with what Samus could have sworn was a smirk. "By that number he is sixty-seven."

"You are nineteen," Old Bird replied, barely passing his eyes over Grey Voice. Both seemed to be using the other's number, high or low, as an insult.

Samus frowned a bit at this whole exchange. She always had to be careful and make sure the teachers weren't setting up logical traps for her to fall into. Grey Voice's lectures were often as treacherous as Old Bird's games. However, she still needed to stand up for herself so she said, "But experience's still valuable. With experience comes a chance for understanding. You've both gotten the immortality treatments so you've got an advantage over pretty much anyone who doesn't. More time to learn."

Then she took a breath as she prepared another question. It was one that she had waited a long time to ask. "Are you going to give me the treatments too?"

Here Grey Voice looked over at Old Bird, now with a more pleading expression. As always, Old Bird declined to take a larger role in the conversation. Grey Voice sighed, "That is uncertain. The process is a decision of grave import. By moral design, to give endless life, the ability to create is lost. There is time yet for you to assess that choice."

Samus resisted the urge to squirm in front of them. She knew the science of what they were referring to but when the focus was turned on herself it was still a strange and hazy subject. It lived in the genetic part of her brain, the part which missed humans even as her memories of them grew blurry at the edges. She wasn't even sure what it was she dreamed of some of those nights in the nest bed.

So she shrugged it off. "I know, biological fertility. That's not my path."

"Do you see your path?"

Samus had expected this but still her breath caught in her chest. This was a keystone moment. She stepped forward and planted her metal staff on the black rock. "To be a warrior of the Chozo." This was the first time she'd dared to vocalize what had been growing for years behind her eyes

But Grey Voice hung his head and even Old Bird turned away. That was the wrong answer. Why, Samus could't understand. That was what Old Bird had once been, it was what he was training her to be now. Even Grey Voice's lessons were clearly centered around a life of challenge and combat ranging across the galaxy. Samus had seen the old murals, endless lines of Chozo in brilliant, deadly armor. She'd seen the etched lines of ships that ripped moons apart, of lone fighters who could stand against entire armies, and armies that could stand against multi-system species. She'd seen that this vanguard created the sheltering wings of peace that allowed the rest of the galaxy to prosper. That was obviously her purpose.

But Grey Voice said, "The Chozo are gone."

Samus' eyebrows came together. "No, you're not."

Only silence and the sound of wind followed. Samus felt her frustration wrap into a ball behind her throat. The first round of painkillers began to wane and she could feel her broken finger and ribs start to return to awareness.

She stepped forward. "We're still here. Three of us. I'm Chozo too."

"No."

Old Bird's grunt stabbed far more painfully than any splinter of shattered bone. Samus gripped tighter onto the staff that she had pulled from behind the air. The storm grew closer and the air tasted like acid.

Old Bird turned back from the cliff. His beak softly clicked. "You are human." Samus felt her stomach weaken. Her bones hurt. Then he continued, "You are human and you are Chozo. You are more things than you have yet to become. You are you."

Anger rose up and Samus spat back, furious that they used the same kind of lines she was so often chastised for. "That doesn't mean anything! That's a tautology!" Grey Worm punished any line of argument from her that even veered towards circular logic and yet that's what they told her now?

Beside her Grey Voice let out a long, grunting sigh. His breath whistled faintly. "Yellow Hatchling, all of existence is a tautology. That is the core of meaning itself."

Samus opened her mouth again, but Grey Voice raised one large, long fingered hand. "The storm approaches. We now return inside."

Samus glanced over at the dark approaching clouds that now filled most of the sky above. A grey curtain seemed to draw across the ground beneath it. Then she glanced down at the way she had climbed up. Rain. The math between those two predictable velocities was as easy as it was unpleasant. She grimaced. She was going to lose most of her outer skin on this trip, but it was her fault for letting her teachers tarry here in another web of questions. Oh well, she turned to start to descend toward the first foot-hold.

A scraping sound of stone on stone made her look up. Grey Voice had vanished and Old Bird now stood in an new doorway that had just swiveled open out of a piece of blank rock on the mountain face. Inside was clearly a staircase descending down. Samus hung her head in exasperation as she walked back over to him. His instruction had only been, "Go to the top of the mountain." Climbing had been her own interpretation. Evidently Old Bird had decided that she should have already discovered this particular secret passage.

She shoved past him, not looking at his face which she reluctantly knew would be beaming with humor. Inside, the tunnel was effective a dark shaft ringed with carved steps.

She made her way down the steep stone stairs, narrow and sized for legs much longer than hers. It was very dark, with only the faintest glowing symbols on ancient etchings to allow sight at all. Samus' hard-won staff clinked on each step beside her, sketching out the shaft in echoes. Then, far below lights began to grow more frequent and more intense. The murals of dead, completed prophecies began to give way to current habitation and metal things.

Then she stepped out of the now revealed secret door into a long familiar hallway. A warm orange light washed out from unseen sources. The ceiling spoke to her:

"Hello, Samus."

Samus smiled in an indiscriminate direction, knowing that the engulfing presence would receive it. There was only one voice here that called her by her name. It was a nice gesture, even from a computer.

"Hello, Mother," she replied.

...​

Samus heard the child's voice, radio waves bouncing across the night shrouded colony buildings and dark canyon walls.

"Help me, someone. My name's Roger and I'm scared."

She was already running, armor straining in the race away from that distant sighting of the impossible. With each pounding step the living Chozo was left further behind. How could that be? No, the mystery would remain after the immediate threat was dealt with. How did these pirates find what Samus had failed to find through decades of searching? That wasn't important. Where had the Chozo been? She had to move faster.

Her mind flashed back the Pirate command ship; a Chozo made cube, empty with a hollow center. The cube had been abandoned and unused, because its cargo had already been removed. Its passenger had been removed. Now they stood on this same ground, and she was running away from him.

She shook her head as she sprinted. The child had said that he and his mother were in the ruins, the excavation site. The map flashed in front of her eyes, blue lines floating into existence as dark hallways blurred past her. The closest entrance to the temple complex was in the center of the three canyons that forked off the top of the colony valley. It was back the way she'd just came. How had this child gotten so far away so quickly? There must have been some fast transport method known to the colonists. Some secret informal short-cut not included on the official maps.

Samus sprang forward and tucked up her legs as a wide plane of glass shattered against the suit's metal skin. A constellation of shards briefly twinkled around her, spinning fragments sparkling in the street lamps and starlight. Then she hit the ground and paving bricks crumbled under her toes as she launched into a sprint once more. The canyon wall was at her left separating her from her destination, a barrier of living rock ten times taller than the greatest structure of concrete and metal that the humans had raised here. Its sculptor was the huge volcano and the very planet itself.

Except for that one part. Out of the corner of her eye, Samus spotted a Chozo era statue worked out of the living rock of the canyon. To most eyes it would look like just another of the many vaguely defined Chozo shapes that dotted this scene of their ancient home. Meaningless self-glorification kneeling down on one knee with outstretched arms. But nothing in this entire universe was meaningless.

Samus exhaled gently as her boot swiveled on the street and bit into the pavement as she bolted off in that new direction. She recognized an abnormal aspect to the larger than life stone Chozo's posture, a silent language from an artist two thousand years ago. So she darted between pillar-like legs and zigged back around a fold of carved robe into a concealed tunnel behind. A long dark shaft stabbed out through the valley wall, straight towards the center canyon; straight toward the temple entrance. A shortcut. Samus exhaled with satisfaction as she raced down it, building to her top speed once more.

Scan picked up faint traces on the tunnel floor ahead of her. Several individuals had passed this way recently, making it likely she was on the trail of the colonists who had escaped Ridley. With each step into the shielding rock, the suit's background analysis grew quieter as the various waves of communication from planet and space all faded away. Then Samus was just left with her own breathing and the sound of her footsteps striking the stone floor.

She burst out the other side into the night. The south end of this new canyon, the center branch of three, was half filled with several of the huge dome-like buildings of the Research Center campus. A warning briefly flashes in Samus' visor as a very distant floating shape was briefly visible between two of those structures. Metroid, out looking for surviving prey or more pirate sacrifices.

Samus turned away from that as she ran up the canyon towards the prime Chozo site. This narrow valley was clearly one of the landforms with volcanic origin, as within a few hundred yards the space was already contracting. High up above, flanges of stone projected out from each canyon lip, gnashing the sky like teeth, remnants of a former roof to this massive lava tunnel. However, sometime in the millions of years after the eruption, that tunnel had become a watercourse and some departed stream had carved down at the floor creating a narrow floor beneath a wider bench halfway up the walls. As Samus hurried along that lowest floor she could see structures of stone and metal up there, habitations built into the shape of the land as if they only half existed. Chozo buildings.

This path along the bottom was meant to be walked. To the immortal Chozo any errand that was not worth walking to was not worth doing, even if the distance was a hundred miles. The discoveries of immortality and prophecy had rather eroded that species' sense of urgency by the end. However, somewhere along the line here the humans had injected their own timeframes and so widened and paved the winding footpath into a nice straight road. Now, as Samus' jog reached thirty miles per hour she had to admit she was leaning towards the human opinion on time.

Suddenly the old narrow river course opened up as the canyon's dark narrow reaches came to a very decisive end. A wall lay in front of her, a hundred and fifty feet tall, reaching up to where the canyon's roof reformed shutting out the stars. The wall stretched across the canyon like the end of the world, each side sprouting a statue of stone and metal as tall as the entire wall. In the center the glowing patterns and faint lights etched out a massive portal just barely visible in the night, locked and barred. The way was shut.

The huge amphitheater space in front of the door was filled with modular white and blue Federation buildings, evidently a major workplace for the colony researchers. They'd even brought their own power supplies up here. Samus noticed that several strings of those cables snaked off towards the terminus wall before ending limply on the ground outside the door, snapped and broken. The gateway had been shut in a hurry. That at least fit with what Samus had heard on the coms.

As if on cue human radio transmission broke through, much closer and stronger this time. "Hello? Aurora unit? Anyone? Please, I need help! My mom is hurt and we're stuck back here? I don't know how to get the temple door back open from this side. Please, help me! There's a lot of blood."

Samus looked up at the massive wall. The boy Roger's transmission was coming from the other side, but she couldn't risk responding. The pirates could hear every open transmission here, if they knew she was at the Temple door already they might just blanket this valley with missiles. All she could do was work quickly and then try to get the colonists out even quicker.

She looked left and right, the suit's scan attacking each nearby federation computer. Unfortunately, the humans' emergency procedures had gotten ahead of her here; all the data she was searching for was wiped. She would have to re-solve this door the old fashioned way.

The two massive flanking statues seemed to stare down at her, the pale light from their dimly glowing eyes painting the beaked faces into the night's shadows. On each, one hand stretched out, warding or welcoming with palms larger than Samus' entire body. On the other side, one hand lifted up and one sank down, the carved naturalistic postures reaching for something just out of grasp.

The suit was able to extract some small bits of the Federation's research. The first told the name of this complex. However, Samus didn't need the little box of text which floated into her vision, she could easily read the glowing orange letters etched in the wall one hundred and fifty feet of the valley floor. The Chozo had always been mercurial in what exactly they considered a secret.

The ten-foot high words shone out, seeming to levitate in the void of night. Translations from Chozo to human standard were sometimes easy, sometimes deceptively difficult. An example lay in the first of these two words, "Temple". Chozo didn't worship anything, but they revered everything. Chozo didn't need faith, but they created it. Chozo had no religion, until they made every aspect of their reality into a religion in which they were at once the highest gods and lowest sinners. The implication of the label on this wall was at once "laboratory", "refuge", "vault", and "school". For humans, "temple" was close enough.

The other half of the translation was even trickier. In fact, Samus could almost feel the intent to confuse across the weave of time. This wall was thousands and thousands of years old. By Samus' scan it might have been the oldest Chozo settlement she'd ever found, and yet it had evidently been in use right up until the very end. The question was, for what use? Here the name only taunted her, this temple of an inscrutable cause, dating from long before the obvious interpretation. This was the temple of the searcher, of the warrior, of the hunger, of the hunter.

To a human tongue, that word was pronounced "metroid."

The feel of dramatic irony was always rather grating.

A new broadcast crackled across the air, and Samus spun back in surprise as she realized it was coming from the Research Compound. Despite all the bio-computer's former concern for the security and secrecy of the five thousand remaining people she held in her sanctum, Aurora now spoke out into the air for all to hear.

"Aran, the temple door must remain closed."

Samus continued to examine the front wall. Far over to the side, beside the legs of the massive statue, an older instillation of Federation equipment showed one of their initial attempts at tackling this same problem. Scan revealed faint traces of past drilling through the rock. The suit suggested one small hole, just enough to snake through some electrical instruments or basic drones. Unfortunately, that would not help her now. That drill was was typical of humans; they encountered a complex riddle and their first reaction was to just power past it with focused violence. Despite the urgency, Samus smirked. Truth was, if not for the current mission constraints her first reaction to this door would have been a sustained barrage. That did end up being the answer about half the time. Instead she continued looking and inspecting.

At night, this deep and narrow canyon was practically a cave. The faint lights of the Chozo carvings and the lines of Federation electrics looked like the colony webs of two dueling species of luminescent fungi across the floor and walls. A faint breeze curled down the brush the dust here. Then through that same cold night air, Aurora's broadcast returned.

"Pirate communications have reported casualties among the revealed shelter inhabitants. That is tragic but it means they can not be saved. The most important mission objective must be to to keep advanced technology out of Pirate hands. The temple is currently sealed and keeping them out. This state of affairs must be allowed to continue."

Samus wondered if Aurora had picked up any of her interactions with the computers here at the door, or if the bio-computer was just guessing what she might be doing after hearing Roger's transmission. Guessing accurately, Samus had to admit, but anyone with an access to her file would probably have made the same conclusion. Aurora was right of course, given what she knew. However, the Pirates had a Chozo captive who they'd just brought to the planet surface. This temple door was about to become a beaded curtain and the Federation forces had no way of knowing that yet. Samus continued her work.

"Please, Aran. In all likelihood the Pirates are taking advantage of this transmission to lead you into a trap that advances their plans. Aran, please acknowledge."

Another great guess, Aurora was on a roll. This Ridley had spent most of the day verbally taunting her, of course he would be wracking his brain to figure out how to use Roger's transmission against her. Suit analysis of micro-signatures in the transmission at least gave a high probability that it was a real juvenile human mouth making those sounds rather than some Pirate computer faking the whole thing. She still was expecting an ambush to collapse on her at any moment, but what did it matter? She had to save the child. If you understand your own nature, you understand just how few choices there really were.

Aurora was sounding desperate though. There had to be a lot of underlying direct orders at play to make an incredibly powerful AI sound like it was struggling with an issue. What exactly had the federation found in this Temple of the Hunter? What was so terrifying compared to what these Pirates had already demonstrated? Samus needed to know, since with the Chozo in hand Ridley would have it soon enough. This temple was huge, and if Samus remembered the satellite map correctly, it had three main entrances, one in each of the main branch canyons. This door was simply the closest.

A super missile barrage against the door sounded more appealing by the second. The good news is that the Chozo were great fans of security through obscurity and so there was undoubtedly a way for a stranger in a Chozo battle suit to open this. She just had to hope that it wasn't a way for someone in an undamaged Chozo battle suit to open this.

Her scans traced an invisible web of different materials and thermal sensors showed unshielded conduits behind the armored surface of both the door and the two huge statues. It would have been really useful if Aurora had include the temple data on the data dump she'd given when they'd had that hard wired connection. The Federation's attitude towards "need to know" was always infuriating. Samus always got it in the end but the process really racked up her felony record.

The statues' eyes were glowing so Samus shot them. That didn't seem to do anything. Then she set herself to climbing up the metal robe of the flanking statue whose hand reached towards the earth instead of the sky. The general idea was that the Chozo loved making their keys inconvenient to reach.

Aurora's shielded facility began broadcasting again. "I am forwarding a transmission from Commander Nakamura." Samus' eyebrows came together as she examined the back of a metal hand larger than a transport van. The Federation forces really were concerned.

There was a brief pause as Aurora's broadcast signature flicked to relay a different ID. Then a female voice whispered over the electric spectrum. "Um, hello? Hello, who is this? My com just turned on. Hello? Is this regarding my request for those file declassifications on Aran's case?"

Clinging to her perch fifty feet up, Samus couldn't help smiling. Hello, Officer Yin. How are you?

It didn't sound like Yin had slept either. Samus could hear the nearly silent tremble of vocal cords stressed by exertion and stimulants. Yin said, "Records Department? Only there's no ID on this call or-"

There was a brief click and then Nakamura's rather angry voice took over. "Damn it, it does outgoing calls too? Aran, if you survive this I might want to murder you for what you did to my com system."

Samus was starting to like Nakamura, for all the secret goals hiding behind his words. She hoped it was the pirates who had released the metroids on this world. She'd be disappointed now if she had to kill the captain. More disappointed since she had no idea how she'd manage that from here. At the moment she had other problems, including this one band of red stone on the statue arm that was conductive to electricity for some reason.

Nakamura sounded tired too. Of course, he probably hadn't half shredded many of his vital organs during an uncontrolled planetary reentry but the commanding an orbital battle was stressful too. "I know the pirates can hear us, so you can't safely reply, but you can still listen to us."

Samus frowned at a bit of ancient engraved writing that decorated the wall. "The weight of your sins will rise to the fall of..." Did that clue mean to go up or to go down? Why couldn't anyone just build a doorknob?

Somewhere in space, the Commander sighed, "There are lives at risk down on the planet. I know. But if these Pirates manage to incorporate even more Chozo technology then everyone on this ship, everyone in this sector is at risk. Analysis came back on that big attack from the Pirate capital ship and it was Chozo wave-beam technology. They've cracked some code in a way even the Federation hasn't managed."

Ah, she had it! If she analyzed the last line of that poem the it meant that she just had to...No, wait, that was just the name of the door's Chozo designer. Samus clonked her helmet's forehead against the rock in frustration.

Nakamura was still talking, "Thwarting the Pirate forces must be your top priority. It must be your only priority. I'm afraid that's an order, Aran. Do you understand?"

Samus jerked back from her latest experiment poking at the statues, the suit's shield sizzling. Why and how was that thing full of acid?! She hopped back and landed on the canyon floor with a thump as the dust shook from the impact. She stood up and glanced back, at the night sky framed above the distant Research Compound. Someone up in those stars Diomedes was slowly repairing, however it sounded like it still might be a few hours.

It also sounded like Nakamura had read a psych profile of hers somewhere. He was talking like Adam, though he hadn't risked calling her "lady" yet. She couldn't blame him for that, it was a legitimate psychological tactic when faced with a difficult command. But her eyebrows came together all the same.

Samus stepped back and looked at the massive wall as a whole. Then her eyes focused on one precise point that was suddenly very clear to her. She'd found the key. She raised her weapon. Nakamura was right, she was being an idiot. Against everything else on the line, Roger and his wounded mother were paltry feathers to weigh down that scale. But Samus also knew herself and she knew what she would do. It was inevitable, and still she hesitated.

Floating text blinked into sight on her visor. "Your path lies before you."

The suit's malfunction was here again. Again it was offering opinions and judgments in a strangely living wording. Was it worth it to hope for one particular explanation?

"Do you understand? Yes/No"

A tired smile ticked at the corner of Samus' mouth. Her thumb swept to the left.

"Then let's get going, Lady."

Samus fired. Burning energy splashed across the hidden keystone and eldritch Chozo circuits glowed into life, signaling that she had solved the puzzle. It was always nice when shooting worked.

The door rumbled open to reveal a massive stone hall that slumbered in a bath of dim reddish light.

In that moment Roger's transmission crackled to life again, his little voice quick and happy. "Thank you very much, Samus Aran." Samus' heart faltered. The child had never known her name. "You are as effective as always."

Off to the side of the inner room, beside where the Federation had drilled that tiny hole through the wall there was a single small remote transmitter lying on the ground where it had been poked in from outside; a Pirate made transmitter.

Samus took a deep breath as she heard the pounding advance of armored feet charging up the canyon behind her. The reaches of the silent temple took those hundred sounds and knitted their echoes together into a soft thrum. It drifted off through the winding halls ahead like the quick heartbeat of a small creature. Inside the deserted temple, it found no answer. Samus breathed out.

Then she turned back and fired.

...​