Metroid: Into the Black Abyss

One: SR-571


(Greetings to everyone interested in reading this story. I was motivated to write this piece after taking a trip down memory lane and reviewing the story behind Metroid Fusion, if you are curious.

This fanfiction will be somewhat violent and there may be bad language, but I don't plan on having any extremely graphic content, so a T rating should be OK. Also, since this piece will be focused on far fewer characters than Go to Sleep, I feel that I will be in my comfort zone… you will have to let me know how I measure up.

Anyway, please enjoy)


Samus's first gunship was a marvel of technology. When she had left the Federation to become a freelance bounty hunter, she had had military engineers design it for her essentially from the ground up, selecting components that would make it fast, agile, powerful, dangerous. Following the advice of a fighter unknown years before, Samus wanted to be able to float like a butterfly but sting like a bee.

Stealth had almost been left out of the equation. Almost. After all, Samus had resolved to keep her missions mostly to Federation controlled space, where she wouldn't particularly need to hide. Most of her missions had little to no stealth component, so what use was there in shelling out millions of extra dollars for a feature that she would barely, if ever, use?

As it had turned out, however, in the course of fabricating her ship, one of the head engineers had wanted to test out a new stealth module, a CPU-sized unit that he had promised would cloak her from all but the most advanced of detection systems. Samus had been wary of accepting the unnecessary upgrade, but he had pleaded with her.

In the end, she had accepted, given the condition that she would not be charged for the upgrade. And ever since the first time she had slipped into the center of a Zebsian convoy without their notice right up until the very second she began to fire, Samus had accepted that there was indeed a need for every bounty hunter's ship to be stealthy.

It was for this reason that since then, all of her ships had been not only powerful and deadly and agile and fast, but stealthy. Everyone in the Galactic Federation who had worked with her knew how she liked her craft, and for that reason, when her ship had crashed into the asteroid field outside of SR-388, she had been assigned a new ship, an experimental unit… with state-of-the-art stealth upgrades.

Thank God for those upgrades. Because despite her years of loyal service to the Federation, Samus knew that they were searching for her. And if they could find her… she didn't know what would happen.


It was two days after she had crashed the Biologic Space Laboratories into SR-388, permanently destroying the station and its research. Of course, Samus had no desire to destroy property or knowledge, but that wouldn't matter to the Galactic Federation. The GF wouldn't care that she had only acted to stop them from allowing the X parasite to spread, they would only care that she had demolished trillions of dollars' worth of equipment and research, and it wouldn't help her case that she had done so to impede their future plans.

She had probably just blacklisted herself forever. The GF would never hire her again, and she knew it. So, now… she didn't know what to do.

She had received a high-priority communications hail within an hour of BSL's destruction. She had ignored it and the subsequent demands to talk, and eventually, she had grown annoyed with the constant ping-ping-pings of incoming hails and then she had just shut her communication unit off, powered up her engines and her stealth module, and launched herself into orbit around SR-388.

Now, only the stars were her company. Samus had taken off her helmet, and then her Power Suit altogether. She had shut off her ship's internal lights and she had reclined in the pilot's seat and just looked out into the cold darkness of deep space.

The way her ship was oriented didn't give her a view of SR-388. Instead, Samus was allowed to look into the unknown distances, the depths of oblivion, the heart of the universe itself. Everything was so perfectly still and silent that she could hear her own heart beating—lub dub, lub dub, lub dub—at a healthy 45 beats per minute. She could hear her breathing and she could hear her own diaphragm contracting as she continued to stare into the stars.

There was a nebula in the distance—a massive, purple cloud of gas and plasma that gyrated so slowly that she could barely perceive it. The eerie violet shade cast by this behemoth amalgamate dyed the stars beyond it strange colors, in contrast with the pure, sometimes blinding white of their brothers unencumbered from Samus's view by other obstacles.

She liked looking into space. Sometimes, she had eyes for nothing besides that distant, strange void. It was true that there were many source of comfort available to her; she had enough money to satisfy almost any worldly desire. Still, she couldn't help but spend much of her free time sitting alone in her ship and looking out to the stars not quite beyond her reach, wondering what secrets and what adventures lay waiting for her.

"Is something wrong, Lady?" a voice suddenly asked. "You haven't moved in the last six hours."

It was a few moments before Samus reacted. And when she did, it was not in the way that a warrior like her might be expected to move. Moving slowly and in a surprisingly feminine manner, taking advantage of the mobility and flexibility her Zero Suit gave her, she stretched, reaching as far up as she could and arching her back until she reached the height of pleasure such an action could create.

And then she sat back down with perfect posture and spoke.

"I'm just thinking, Adam," she said in an unreadable tone. "I've… just made a pretty big mistake."

"Don't say that," the computerized voice said back to her. The chiding tone took Samus back to another time, a happier time, perhaps, when Adam was alive and when her career was in good shape. It made her smile, briefly, until she shook her head and replied.

"Why not?" Samus asked. "We just blew up BSL, one of the GF's biggest mobile scientific centers. I'm probably in the newspapers right now, and it's only a matter of time before the police get here. Now, I'm not going to get caught," she said with a sudden, steely determination in her voice. "But my career as a bounty hunter is over. The Federation will never hire me again, so… I don't know what I'm going to do."

She paused.

"And don't tell me that we did what we had to do. That won't matter to them."

Adam Malkovich was dead. His consciousness was now held in a computer, and computers couldn't smile. But Adam Malkovich had been able to when he was alive, and if Adam Malkovich had been alive then, he would have smiled.

"All right, Lady," he said. "If you're so sure of yourself…"

Samus sat up even straighter than she had been until then. Her perfectly smooth brow furrowed.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Adam Malkovich would have smiled. The computer that held his consciousness simply paused for effect.

"That's supposed to mean that maybe you don't know the Federation as well as you think you do. The Galactic Federation isn't one entity, it's… a collection of hundreds of different people and groups, each with their own desires, fears, and ideas. Some have more power than others, and you're right, up until a few hours ago, the GF as a whole did want you to turn yourself in to the nearest police cruiser. But the situation has changed," Adam said. "The situation has certainly changed."

A moment later, a communications package displayed itself on the ship's central HUD. Samus watched, then as a two star General stood and stared at her through space and time.

"This message is classified for Samus Aran only. No other persons or AIs without proper clearance may view the contents of his message."

He paused.

"My name is General James Albright," he said. "I'm in charge of most of the Galactic Federation's scientific research. I understand you were recently familiar with one of my favorite projects, the BSL."

A slight smile touched his lips. But then his voice grew grave again.

"You defied lawfully given orders. You strayed from your mission's parameters. And, to top it all off, you engaged in acts of terrorism and war against the Galactic Federation. If caught, you would face life in prison. Hell, they might even bring back capital punishment for you."

Samus was seriously tempted, just then, to close the message and delete it entirely. She had no desire to look into the eyes of the dark-haired man before her as he berated her for acting in a manner that was "the only rational way to secure galactic peace and security"—hold on, those were his words, not hers. Samus suddenly began to listen again as the General's message took a new direction.

He explained that after a thorough review of the evidence and facts at hand, the Galactic Federation had concluded that any attempts to control or work with the X parasite would have been in vain. Beyond that, at his insistence, they had accepted that, in fact, the only way to stop the X parasites from spreading with potentially disastrous consequences had been to obliterate them, and that was exactly what Samus had done.

In short, internal memos had been issued. Procedures had been updated, and those who had wanted to control X and arrest Samus had been "encouraged" to go into early retirements. And Samus Aran had been completely forgiven.

What would be printed in the papers, Albright mentioned, was a tiny column mentioning that one of the GF's classified projects had been terminated. That was all, and provided that Samus was discrete, that's all that there ever would be.

The General then paused, for a moment. It was clear that he was on the very edge of saying something, yet he wasn't quite sure whether he ought to or not.

In the end, however, he decided to go ahead and say it. There was a new mission, it seemed, right in that very sector of space—a mission that called for Samus's particular skills and expertise. It was another science mission, and for once, it was a mission that would have nothing to do with Metroids.

"If you accept this mission," the General said, "please respond to me ASAP and proceed to Galactic Federation Outpost Cruiser Zeta-319 to link up with the supplies and personnel you'll need to complete this mission. And on the way… you should probably research what you can about planet SR-571."

He paused again. And this time, he smiled to a degree that was neither imperceptible nor cloying.

The General said nothing more after that; the communication ended and the HUD that had overlain Samus's view of space cleared. For a few seconds, Samus simply sat there, thinking, her face an unreadable mask of calm.

"Well, Lady?" Adam said a moment later. "Are you going to accept the mission?"

He knew the answer to that question. And so did Albright; that's why he had smiled at the end of the communication. So, Samus didn't waste words—she just recalibrated her ship's navigation unit, bringing it out of orbit before sending it on a direct course for Outpost Cruiser Zeta-319. She didn't know what awaited her there, and she certainly didn't know what awaited her on SR-571.

But she knew that it had been written into her soul that she had to pursue every adventure that she encountered.

So, Samus launched her ship into space at cruising speed. She watched the stars pass her by with only half a mind. Her thoughts were confused and aimless, but every single one of them was centered around the coming mission and the mysterious, distant planet that was called SR-571.


(I hope this has been an interesting introduction for you. Please review and let me know what you think about the story so far. I will upload the next chapter within a few weeks… so, until then, Alex out.)