Her ship banked to the side, firing its boosters once and letting it hang into orbit. Her video screen flickered twice, registered an error and then, with a crackle, the audio frequencies leapt on.
"Urrrrrrrgh," a deep voice said. Some chewing noises next, then: "Yeah, you're gonna have to identify yourself."
She lifted a hand to a switch and flicked it once. The static noise on the audio died down and she said, "Gunship class. No registered name. Carrying single passenger."
She flicked the switch, and the static blared back on, accompanied by a guttural burp and then, "Dock, uh, red platform. Number six, gunship class. Enjoy your stay."
The static vanished.
Ahead, in the viewscreen, the station swung into view. It was a round metal structure, spinning as a decent enough rate, four ducking platforms extending from its side, each corresponding with a colour.
It was framed by the bright blue of the Adare galaxy, and as its ocean-like gases came into view, Samus was grateful to see something other than the black void of space.
There were a number of preprogrammed codes on the ship computer, but none matched the station's particular speed. She brought up the terminal, coded it herself, and let the ship move beside the red platform.
Number six was a large enough entrance, and the gunship had little difficulty maneuvering in.
The gravity was decent enough -- not quite up to planetary snuff, but Samus could get around with little difficulty. She got some stares floating from the gunship to the main chamber, but on the main chamber everyone was exotic enough that no one was exotic.
There were jangling bells, and screaming vendors, all beneath the hot lamps hanging from the ceiling of the station. Creatures with light white fur swarmed them, trying to sell jewels that streamed out of their hands like water. Large feathered aliens struggled against the gravity, swamped in ragged cloaks, trying to peddle jury-rigged spacecraft pieces and machines.
Very few came in the way of Samus has to made her way to the center square. The square was filled with swarming crowd, and there were actual brick buildings here, built around the square and slanted slightly inwards from years of centrifugal movement.
She chose one, with a sign swinging back and forth, neon soaking it in the form of the letters 'THE ONE-LEGGED WHORE'.
It was dark inside, and nearly empty, as no one really started drinking until the sixteenth cycle, when a lot of the station staff were off. The five floors of the place creaked under their own weight, and the blue thing behind the bar glanced up, its frame silhouetted by all the neon bleeding out from the walls.
Her helmet clicked when she spoke, and her voice came out accompanied with the deep echo of a vocoder: "Has Terasu come in?"
"Yeh," the blue thing said, two of its six arms sweeping through the neon glow and pointing up to the fourth floor. "Should be doing his rounds."
There was a man sitting at a table near the elevator, a hunched over gentleman with a thin mustache and a single gold eye set into his left socket. "He isn't here, Miss Aran," he said.
Samus punched the button on the elevator, not glancing over. Then, as the doors slid open, her helmet clicked, and she said, "Who?"
"Ridley. He isn't here."
"I wouldn't imagine that he would be."
"But you're after him."
"Isn't everyone?"
-----------------
There was something perhaps angelic about Samus for Ridley, really, something biblical.
Consider: Ridley exploding up from the ground, swathed in shadow, flaming sword in his hand, fire boiling in the back of his throat.
And her, armour broken, covered in white light from the exploding ship above her, blond hair swirling about her, a bright glow streaming from her pale skin.
Everytime she crashed to earth, everytime she was a woman rather than a goddess, it was a slam to his chest.
Hadn't she dated that man once? How could she, an Artemis, stoop to such base delights.
Not that Ridley could really complain in that respect.
It had been on the aerial port on the water planet Calmedes, really. There were no weapons on Calmedes, they said, for anyone, the Calmedians, the travelers, the pirates, the bounty hunters. Murder was punishable with a watery death.
The banquet had been the worst, really. Beautiful, though: the tall windows on either side of the room looked out onto the sparkling sea, and beyond that, the ghostly visage of the planet's gigantic forest moon, itself green and frothy.
The lady Myiaka had smiled at him, her fishy lips parting open and her giant dark orbs blinking at him. "Tell me, Master Ridley, wouldn't you consider piracy a dangerous profession?"
Ridley glanced over at Samus, sitting farther down the table. "Better believe it, miss Myiaka. Probably the most dangerous profession in the galaxy."
"I wouldn't say that," their lord and host said, in his deep voice, his vast scaly body shifting in his seat, his whiskers shaking. "Jovarian miners, I'd say, have it worse, giving the vast gravity of the gas giants they work in."
"But of course," Ridley said, smiling at him.
He shifted, because the subdermal mounted needle was starting to inch. The Calmedian X-rays didn't see through dragon scales, after all, and Mother Brain's latest heir had ordered their lord and host dead by sundown.
After dinner, Ridley had followed Samus out into the outer corridor, where the wall-mounted aquariums turned the place into a blue-green wonderland. "Samus," he said.
Samus paused. She wasn't in her hunter armour, but he did recognize a thinner, lighter armoured jacket. She looked like a smuggler, the way she dressed, all light, all dark. In the corridor, she looked like a mermaid, blueish skin, deep blue eyes.
"Ridley," she said.
At the dinner, he had caught her eyeing the human waiter that had served them. He had been young and dark of hair and skin, possibly handsome. Ridley couldn't stand the idea.
"Why-" he said. He stood up straighter, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. "Why are you here?"
She smiled, her lips slowly parting. "That a serious question?"They paused to look at the fish in the wall, the fish darting around, sliding around the light.
"Simple lives," Samus said. "Eat and swim and sleep."
"Are you here because of us?" Ridley asked.
"Think the world revolves around you?" She touched the glass, ran her finger down the surface. "Some of us have bigger fish to fry."
Ridley realized where Samus's attention was. He could flick his wrist, sink the needle into her neck, and watch her drop.
Watch her fall, that blond hair coiling around her skin, a drowning mermaid, sinking into oblivion.
The death of Artemis.
------------------
"Terasu," Samus said, standing on the fourth floor facing the small man. She stood in her full regalia, splendid warrior.
Two merchants sitting nearby got up and moved to another table.
But Terasu set his broom aside, put one hand on his hip and said, "Samus Aran, here to ruin my day, are we?"
He took her into the back room, where the kitchen staff worked, and stuck a cigarette in his mouth. "Came all this way to see me, Aran? I'm touched."
Her helmet clicked, and her voice came out from that helmet, "Didn't know you were here until I saw your name on the registry. What are you doing working a bar like this?"
Terasu shrugged. "When you're wanted on six major routes, you do what you can to get by. And how about you, Samus?"
"I'm here for Ridley."
"Yes. Ever the quest. Maybe you'll get your wish someday."
"Wish, Terasu?"
"That Ridley will someday kill you, and you'll never have to actually enter proper life, ever. You'd never have to meet someone, settle down, have a life. You could just go on, hunting forever, and one day have the dragon take you down. A fine way for a hunter to go."
She was silent for a moment. "Not true," she said.
"Sure it is," Terasu said, stamping the cigarette out. "Hunters don't end up with the happy ending. You know the story, don't you? Artemis asked Zeus to remain chaste, to never marry. She was given a powerful bow and a chariot with which to hunt."
"So I hunt."
"But you know how the rest of the story goes, right?" He shrugged, looked away, and smiled. "One day she was bathing, and the hunter Actaeon stumbled across her and spied on her as she bathed. She discovered him, was enraged, so she turned him into a stag, and pursued him across the stars and the sky until she killed him."
"Thanks for the history lesson. You want to get a drink or something? I've got time to kill and a lot to catch up on."
He smirked. "Sure, Aran."
----------------
Somehow it had all gone wrong. Someone had warned the lord and host of Ridley's intentions. He had found a thermal detonator in the lord's bedchamber, and managed to hurl himself through the windows as it went off.
As fire filled the sky, as the ocean and sky tumbled head over heels as he soared through the air, he saw Samus out of the corner of his eye, perched on a rooftop, blond hair flying in the wind, something gleaming in her hand.
He hadn't been the only one who'd decided to take the subdermal approach, but how could she, with regular skin, be able to slip a weapon past the X-ray?His wings spread, he shot into the air, banked around and came at her.
The length of plastic in her hand extended out, becoming a longbow. She nocked an arrow, took aim and fired.
The arrow tore through his left wing, and he screamed, crashing into the smooth rooftop and tumbling along, all the wonders of the colourful sunset above him. He slid across the roof and managed to dig his claws in before he went right off down in the deadly fall to the ocean.
"Though-" he shouted. "Thought you had bigger fish to fry."
Samus said nothing. She nocked another arrow.
She was a goddess, Ridley knew, a goddess of death, his goddess of death, and she would never stop until his death. He grinned. That kind of hate was almost a form of love really.
She shot another arrow, expertly aimed.
He rolled to the side, the arrow bouncing off and spinning into nothingness. He scrambled up the side of the room and lunged for her. He struck and they both went off, into the air.
They fell, fighting, the roaring of the thrusters keeping the buildings aloft rushing past them.
It began to rain.
---------------
"I have had meaningful relationships before," Samus said, sitting across the table from Terasu. "I have."
Her helmet was next to her, and the glass of wine in her hand smelled good and strong. Bold, she supposed someone could describe it.
"Like what?" Terasu said. "Have you ever dated anyone before that you could call it as a meaningful relationship?"
"Dating and sexual relationships aren't the only meaningful relationships out there."
"You barely have any friends, Samus. The only real relationships you keep for any great length of time have been your enemies."
She looked up. "What about motherhood?"
He blinked. "You've never been a mother, Samus."
She bit her lip, and looked away. Then she shook her head. "No, no, I guess I haven't been."
She heard Terasu talk about the problems he'd been having with his wife, their new place, life on the station. She paid for her wine and went off, heading for the blue platform of the station, re-attaching her helmet.
There was a child standing next to the blue platform speaking to her mother. She laughed and pointed at the video screen. "It moved, it moved!"
"Yes," the mother said, smiling.
The child watched enrapt.
And Samus was enveloped in the feeling of something warm in her arms, pulsating, tentacles wrapped lovingly around her arm. She blinked back tears.
But she could hear them -- the hounds baying and barking. Her quarry was near.
She found him, as she always did. He lay in the back of a black market surgeon's office, recuperating, bandages wrapped around his wing.
She disposed of the surgeon's guards easily, kicked the surgeon down, kicked the door in.
She leveled the gun on the dragon.
Ridley, swathed in shadows, shifted, looked up, and said, "Damn."
Her helmet clicked. "You left me alive back there on Calmedia, Ridley," she said. "Why?"
He had. He had managed to pull out of the fall, spinning back upwards best he could with his busted wing. The rain crashed against him, and he slammed them both into an outcropping of rock on one of the floating islands. She had misjudged his speed, and the impact had knocked the wind from her.
His claws had closed onto her neck, after all. She figured this would've been it, the way she'd always foreseen her death. She hadn't been good enough.
The injured Ridley shifted in his bed, and reached for his meds. "Thought it was clever the way you set me up," he said. "We just wanted the lord's treasury. You just wanted to kill me."
Samus could barely hear him, could only hear the baying of the hounds, growing louder, frothing at the mouth. Her gun began to charge up.
Ridley's lips pulled back. "I figured you'd be the one to kill me."
The gun died back down, slowly. She looked at the dragon intently and said, softly, "Same."
She turned around to go.
"What-?" he said.
"Get better soon," she said, turning to glare at him. "And run. Run far away, because I'll always be chasing, and the next time we meet, I am going to kill you."
He blinked, and then his lips pulled back even wider, yellow fangs shining in the low light. "Love ya, Samus."
She closed the door on him and walked out. The garish lights of the station fell on her as she made her way back to her gunship, but she imagined that it was moonlight drenching her, a bow in her hand, hounds baying before her.
There were still many more hunts to come.