Samus lay in a cold sweat, breathing hard and rubbing her forehead. She had sat up as she woke, and bumped her head on the sleep tube's fogged glass enclosing. When she looked at her hand, it was smudged with blood. She sighed, trying to calm her pounding heart.
She'd had the dream again. This was the third night in a row this week.
Samus could never quite remember what happened in the dream, as it always seemed to slip away into her subconscious just as she awakened, but she was left with a single image every time she had it. An image of her parents, dead on the colony she was born on, with Space Pirates all around, laughing in triumph. The Pirates were in the process of looting supplies and technology from Samus' neighborhood, and her parents had gotten in the way, so they just shot them. No warning, no "Move it or die," they had just come through the wall and blasted hot plasma through her parents' chests with a practiced lethality. Blood had splattered across the living room, and as Samus' mother and father fell to their knees, already dead from shock, one space pirate had blown their heads off. He seemed to smile at the direct hits, and made a guttural noise that might have been laughter before turning to wreck the house in search of anything he might want.
Samus shook her head and wiped the blood off of the sleep tube's enclosing. There wasn't anywhere to move it to, since she was naked and the tube was devoid of cloth or cleanbots, but she didn't feel like leaving it there. She punched the open button and robotic arms slowly hefted the glass from the polished metal and concealed circuitry of the sleep tube, then rotated it to the right, exposing Samus to the rest of her ship's single, tiny deck. Samus warily lifted herself from the tube, stepped down onto the cold steel floor, and took three steps to the one-person shower across the compartment. She opened its clear glass door with the press of a button, stepped inside, and closed the door with another button.
"Water on, one hundred thirty Fahrenheit," she said, in a slightly groggy, but commanding enough tone. Her voice was deeper than the average colony girl's would be, but really, she'd lived a harder life than the average colony girl. Steaming hot water immediately began to pour from a grated opening in the shower's ceiling, waking up Samus's skin and clearing her mind. Most people used nanobots these days, and those would inject stimulants to simulate anything that water could do, but Samus preferred the classic. Something about it just felt better to her. Nanobots could simulate that feeling, too, but that left the realm of "useful," and edged over into "brainwashing." Besides, she had enough nanobots running around in her bloodstream.
She picked up a bar of soap and began to wash herself, her mind still fixated upon the image as she briskly lathered up her arms.
Samus had been at a playground when the colony was raided, and knocked out by a concussive blast from one of the pirates' boarding ships before much of anything happened, so she didn't actually know how her parents died. Of course they didn't die in their house, not only because they were at the playground with Samus, watching her play with her friends, but because they didn't own a house. Samus couldn't quite figure out why she envisioned a house; Nobody owned one on the whole colony. Since the colony was self-contained, it would be silly to have a central government charge housing fees, so everyone was provided personal quarters as long as they held a job. If they didn't hold a job, they were a child and lived with their parents, they were travelers passing through, or they didn't belong on the colony. Most everyone was good at working, though, and it wasn't often that people were exiled for refusing to help out. Samus didn't remember this, of course, she had been far too young to understand anything like it when she lived on the colony. She had learned about it through her own studies of Galactic Federation Colony Protocol growing up.
She had also learned about the Space Pirates in those studies. They were a warlike race of towering creatures that lacked feelings or compassion for others, and only thought of their own technological advancement. Initially this was contained to nonstop war between various would-be dominant factions on their home planet, but once they developed space travel and discovered other intelligent life in the universe, they banded together to overthrow their new enemy: anything other than themselves. When they first set out to destroy their opposition they were just a nuisance, easily repelled by their neighbors in the galaxy and written off as unfriendly. But with their entire populace devoted to their cause, it wasn't long before they advanced to the point of being deadly to anyone that opposed them. As they spread throughout their galaxy at the top of the food chain, their numbers rising exponentially, resources grew scarce. They set out with a new cause to supplement their first: Survive. Entire planets full of Space Pirates would move from solar system to solar system, sapping resources and technology out of necessity, and killing any other intelligent life out of sport, before moving on.
Samus' home colony had been a small morsel, feeding the hungry war machine of the Space Pirates. They moved in and left so quickly, there was hardly time for communication personnel to send distress calls. They had killed everyone without mercy. Something told Samus that her parents were still alive, but she had long banished that as false hope. She hadn't been able to say goodbye to them, to say she loved them one last time before she lost them forever, so of course one part of her mind would always insist upon it, but she knew it wasn't true. The entire colony had been dusted after the pirates cleaned up and cleared out of blast radius. Nobody but Samus and the pirates had survived that, and she only survived it through blind luck.
"Water off, dry." Samus said in a much more earnest voice. As soon as the water stopped falling, an invisible nanofilm attached itself to her only long enough to absorb the moisture from her only slightly pale skin and long, blonde hair, which hung almost perfectly straight down to the middle of her back. She stepped out of the shower and turned left to the dressing compartment. Once inside, the compartment applied a blue nanoskin to her body, designed to intravenously fulfill nutritional and hydrational needs, regulate her body temperature, and remove unnecessary oils and bacteria from her real skin. The compartment also styled her hair into a functional tight-banged arrangement that would keep her eyes unblocked at all times. It also happened to be her favorite look.
Her blind luck had come in the form of the Chozo, a race of bird-like ancients who had long-since reached their societal and technological peak. Once peaceful, space-faring creatures who lived in a harmonious Utopian society, bringing knowledge to the universe, they had redeveloped weapons in response to the spread of the Space Pirate scourge to their galaxies. One such weapon were their Powered Suits, which were devastating pieces of form-fitting machinery capable of increasing the wearer's agility tenfold, and creating and unleashing massive ballistic and energy attacks from within a single power source. The Powered Suits linked to the Chozo's bodies and worked in ways that modern human science would not be able to fully explain. The Chozo used these suits to combat the Space Pirates until they rid their territory of them, and then began a campaign to protect the rest of the universe from annihilation.
Hundreds of years into the campaign, a fleet of Chozo ships in pursuit of a battalion of Space Pirates happened upon Samus' colony just as it was about to be destroyed. Though Space Pirate raids historically left none alive, they scanned for survivors and found Samus, concealed in a mess of playground rubble, then escaped with her in their care. They repaired her body and infused her with their blood, permanently boosting her combat ability far above that of a regular human, and through training and augmentation, sharpened her mind and body well beyond her natural limits. They raised her as their own, teaching her the ways of the Chozo and sharing their lore about their only enemy.
They then told her that their time was nearing its end. They had nearly expended their entire race pursuing the Space Pirates, and did not want to continue the war anymore. They were wise enough to see that with Samus' help, humans could take care of themselves. They entrusted her with her own custom-tailored Powered Suit, and set her out into the universe with a mission: To protect her people from the Space Pirates and spread the wisdom and technology of the Chozo. Then, as quickly as they had come into Samus's life, they had vanished.
Samus turned right from the dressing compartment and took two steps forward to her communications console. An alert blip pulsed onscreen, waiting for her to acknowledge it. She tapped the blip with her finger, and it opened into a simple message:
EMERGENCY: SPACE PIRATES ATTACKING IDES COLONY
MILITARY PERSONNEL NOT ADEQUATE
REQUEST SAMUS ARAN TO ELIMINATE THREAT
Samus smiled. She had become quite a known name in the time since she came back from training with the Chozo. In her first weeks reunited with humankind, she had allowed the Galactic Federation to study her Suit and enhanced body for scientific purposes. Humans made leaps and bounds in all areas of technology by replicating systems present in the Suit, from weapons to processors to the basic condition of living, and extracted valuable medical information from her body, enhancing the biological capacity of the average human. The tides of war against the Space Pirates began to turn. However, even the most prodigal scientist couldn't fully understand the Suit, or the changes caused by the Chozo blood flowing in Samus' veins, so Samus was still the single most powerful human in existence. The Galactic Federation repeatedly asked her to join their armed forces, but she refused, saying that their methods were strange to her and did not fit her style of battle. While that was true, she simply could not risk working with others in a combat situation. She was far too efficient, and would outlive anyone on her team, or be hindered pandering to their abilities. That, and her upbringing had distanced her considerably from other humans, making her more of a lone wolf.
Instead of shun the Galactic Federation, the basis of human government and diplomacy, she registered as a bounty hunter. The Federation provided her with a ship, food, and an endless supply of high-paying jobs combating space pirates around the galaxy. After years of work protecting her people, the jobs still came in strong, and with each mission Samus exacted her revenge. It wasn't very Chozo of her to pursue such things, but Samus wasn't all Chozo.
She leaned over the console long enough to type, "On my way," send the message through an encrypted channel, set a flight path to the station from the data provided in the distress message, and look over the enemy details gathered from the station's sensors. Then she turned to the only door in her ship, palmed the door button, and stepped inside.
The next room contained nothing but matching rings in the center of the dull metal floor and ceiling. Samus closed the door behind her and stepped into the ring on the floor. The rings began to glow with a green light, and then projected a green cylinder of energy around her. With a flash, the energy field was gone, and Samus was in her Powered Suit.
The suit boosted Samus from a tall 6'4" to an intimidating 8'1". It was comprised of metallic, sectioned, human-like orange armor with a red chestpiece and helmet. It covered her entire body with some layering of armor, and had helmet-sized, spherical pods on each shoulder, which powered the suit and allowed it and Samus to tuck into a foot-high sphere and lay two different types of bombs, through a process that only the Chozo and Samus had understood. The chestpiece extended up the suit's shoulders and a quarter of the way down its back, where it held a small, dual-exhaust propulsion system that assisted Samus with high jumps. The helmet was round, with a Y-cut green visor made of a strong, glass-like material. The helmet allowed Samus to see in four spectrums of light, scan her surroundings, and interact with local software. Two half-egg shaped pods which regulated oxygen supply rested on either side of the helmet, and connected to two thick tubes running from a small chinpiece at its center. The torso was made of a segmented, tactile, yellow armor that simulated a simplified human anatomy and allowed Samus a full range of movement. On the back of the suit's left hand was a green half-sphere that shined with the same energy as the circles on the floor and ceiling had. In place of the right forearm was a cylindrical weapon with almost the entire front end as the barrel, which could discharge more than eight different types of energy and ballistic weapons, along with a grappling beam for scaling especially difficult terrain. The insides of the arms extended out a little near the armpits to allow for Samus' human frame to fit comfortably inside. The insides of the suit's thighs were yellow rather than orange. The suit's knees ended in pointed triangular plates which covered the wide, less-armored space between the upper and lower leg segments. The shoes, while proportionate and sectioned for mobility, were topped with thick ankle guards that ended in the same triangular plates as the knees. These ankle guards also consisted of pointed rectangles extending diagonally upward and directly backward from each side of the ankle. The shoes had thick, gray, metal soles, which arched in the middle for added mobility.
The entire Suit was self-contained, with facilities to dispose of all waste, and the ability to create new nanoskins to nourish Samus if need be. It could last indefinitely in unfriendly areas thanks to its power supply, and had its own gyrostabilizers for amphibious and zero-G deployment. The interior musculature of the Suit complemented her own musculature perfectly, and by interacting with nanocites in her bloodstream and muscles, gave her extreme physical abilities. The Suit was highly modular and could interface with any Chozo technology around it, meaning that if Samus found any pieces of more advanced Powered Suit components left behind by elusive Chozo, she could integrate them into it. She had done it countless times before on previous missions, increasing her combat ability more than tenfold since she first left the company of her foster race.
Every time Samus donned the Suit it became a part of her, a non-biological shell that, through advanced nano-interface, dizzying master programs, and a mysterious personal link that even she could not fully comprehend, could be moved with simple will. Samus bunched her now-armored left hand into a fist a few times, then curled her fingers. With a thought, she ran a few software diagnostics to make sure that everything was in running order, and it was. The software ran diagnostics and repairs on itself when Samus wasn't using the Suit, so it was always in top shape. She moved around a little to get the Suit up to full physical capacity, stretched to warm up the fresh muscle tissue.
She sighed in contentment as the Suit reacted to her thoughts and mimicked her every movement. Her body might naturally only consist of bones, organs, and muscles, but this was how she was meant to be. Maybe it was the countless Space Pirates she had defeated while interfaced, and maybe it was the Chozo blood coursing through her veins, or maybe it was just the years she had spent interfaced while training to use the Suit effectively, Samus wasn't sure. What she was sure of was that it just felt right.
A warning sounded in her Suit's mind; in her mind: The ship was approaching Ides Station. Samus switched visual to her ship's array of external cameras, and saw a familiar formation of Space Pirate ships attached to the familiar shape of a Galactic Federation station. The image was rapidly growing larger as she closed in on the station, and she chose to land on a docking platform three decks above the boarded ships. It hadn't been long enough for the Pirates to establish zones to place their bombs for detonating the station yet, so those were still on the ships. She was going to work her way to the invading Pirates, tear a hole straight through the center of their forces, then send the ships into space and detonate them in the confusion before cleaning up the rest of the enemy. GF fleets would then move in to rescue survivors, and Samus would be compensated for her efforts with more money and fame, but none of that mattered to her. The only things she cared about were killing Space Pirates and saving as many human lives as possible.
Her ship touched down on the station. External cameras showed no signs of movement in any light spectrum. Sensors indicated that the Pirates were right where she wanted them. As the suit-up room's ceiling opened up into the vacancy of space, and the floor rose to elevate Samus to the outside world, she thought about what the Pirates always called her in their logs: "The Hunter." She smirked, and put her hand to the side of her arm cannon.
It was time to hunt.