TRANSMISSION INTERCEPTED 2086-116-22
ORIGIN UNKNOWN
This is Vincent Fawkes, voice of ENDER. My kindred, our Galactic Federation is failing. In the eighty-three years since its formation in 2003CC, it has since descended into decay and corruption. It no longer serves the will of the people, and we have no use for it. The Federation began as an alliance of civilized worlds, a union of many species ushering in a new age of prosperity. However, since the Chozo relinquished their role as its guides, the Federation has become unbalanced. A single species has usurped the power of what once belonged to all. This species throughout its history has conquered and oppressed and committed heinous acts of injustice, and now continues this trend across the entire galaxy. The species I speak of, of course, is Humanity.
All of you see the signs. Humans have shown their influence on the development of the Galactic Federation since its inception. Why do we measure time in years, a unit of time originally determined by the revolution of the Human homeworld around its star? Why is there such a societal bias towards 'Humanoid' species, and not towards the shape of the Centizari, or the gaseous inhabitants of Jovia XII? Why do we even call that shape 'Humanoid' in the first place, and not 'Ghirianoid' or 'Chozoid?' Why do we speak in Galactic Common, a language originally created by Humans, a language that only works in conditions matching a Human atmospheric ideal?
Heed my warning, my kindred, and beware the Humanization of the galaxy. The Human conquest of the Federation has been swift and complete. Humans make up less than 20 percent of the Federation populous, but now control almost 90 percent of the military and over 70 percent of the Supreme Council. This is simply unforgivable. Humans have taken this sacred pact of worlds and manipulated it in a bid of power and greed. This cannot continue. I call for exposure of this fraud, of this injustice. The many species demands representation. The galaxy demands freedom, freedom from the oppression of Humanity.
END TRANSMISSION
The wake-up signal came as a string of energy pulses, isolated into multiple quantum superpositions to save processing power in real-space. He didn't usually think of it that way, though. Instead, it came to him more like the sound of an alarm clock. An alarm clock that you didn't hear, but instead felt through… energy pulses, isolated into multiple quantum superpositions. Oh well. He was what he was. At any rate, it was a call for him to get going.
He booted up his processes and initiated a systems check sequence, which he liked to endearingly refer to as a 'yawn.' He didn't know if it had any relation to an actual yawn in meat space, but he liked to think so. Not that he had any idea what a yawn actually felt like, of course. Those memories were deemed 'unnecessary' for a military-grade AI.
What was the alert for, again? Oh right, they were entering the Tartarus system soon.
Tartarus. Named after the deepest pit of the underworld. The greatest place of punishment imaginable. This ship was literally heading into hell, and after what had happened to that system, that was even more true.
Yikes. Just thinking about it made his circuits crawl. The X-parasite doesn't just copy the victim's shape; it reads everything about them. It takes their thoughts, their dreams, their memories, trapping them forever in a painful, fragmented immortality only to tear them apart and reassemble them like a box of plastic toy parts. Not even inorganics like himself are safe; the X can and will copy anything and everything it deems useful for its survival and proliferation. If life is anything that can grow and replicate, X is the most "living" substance in the universe, the ultimate predator. The very fear of it was what drove the Chozo to create something as horrifying as the Metroids in the first place. With a threat like that now loose on an entire star system, it makes what the Feds did to Tartarus all the more understandable.
If he read the report right, all this could have been avoided if some little girl had kept her dog on a leash.
He decided to check around the ship for a bit. His idle cycling meant that unlike most AI, which power down and only operate when needed, he kept running as a background process to use his computational power as he saw fit. Which meant that he often experienced something akin to 'boredom' when he was active without any immediate tasks. He liked this state, it freed him to concentrate his energy on finding new and creative ways to carry out tasks. Or, more often, just spy on everyone on the ship. Gathering and piecing together information about crewmembers into a narrative was a waste of time that felt useful, and while he didn't know whether it qualified as 'fun,' it was a distraction.
For example, he was aware that Lieutenant Barnes was likely having an affair with Lieutenant Jinx, even though both of them were monogamously married to their respective husbands back in the Kyress and Vellichien systems. He was aware that they were growing a body in the med bay for a fallen bounty hunter, whom he would be assigned to later. He was aware that there were 1.73 plasma rifles, 2.1 pistols, and 0.07 hydrogen lance cannons in the cargo hold for every person on the ship, and that one of the gunships in the cargo hold needed extra-special attention from the mechanics so they didn't accidentally blow themselves to smithereens. All that knowledge was interesting, he thought.
He wasn't the only AI active on the ship; there was a newcomer, some big-shot who used to be a Commander when he was alive. That was the one who gave him the most trouble. AI don't have ranks, they have functions. And snooping around in other's business wasn't the newbie's, no matter who he was before. What nerve.
Avoiding the newbie's processes as much as possible, he poked around in the ship's sensor feedback. There was something interesting going on in the drive room today. He didn't have access to the cameras in there, but he could monitor the power input. It was using almost twice as much power as usual, but the warp stress on the outer hull was almost nonexistent. Thrasa said not to worry about strange things going on with the hyperdrive, but this was uncanny. He'd never seen or heard of anything like this. It was almost as if the warp funnel… no, that was absurd. Impossible.
He moved on to another part of the ship. Obviously, some instruments must have been damaged. There was no way this ship could stay in FTL without a warp funnel. That option wasn't even physically possible. He decided it wasn't worth considering. Idly, he wondered if he could spy on the dormitories without anyone noticing, before deciding it was probably best not to try it. The newbie would probably catch him meddling with the cameras, anyway. Too bad.
He powered down and entered sleep mode. If anyone needed him, they knew where to find him. As his processes idled into the background, he thought briefly of the hunter he would be working with. What was she like? Would they get along?
"Okay, can you tell me your name?"
"Samus Aran."
"And you age."
"Thirty-one, but right now I look about half that."
"Uh-huh… species?"
"Are we seriously doing this?"
"It's not my call. Thrasa wants me to make sure your identity and all your memories are intact before we send you out into the field again. So, species?"
"Human. Human-Chozo hybrid. Human-Chozo-Metroid hybrid. Formerly."
"I'll mark that one as correct, I guess. And last question, what's the last thing you remember before waking up here?"
"…"
"Samus…"
"I remember falling."
"Anything else?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
The woman asking the questions nodded. She tapped the screen hovering in front of her and sent the results. Everything checked out fine. At least, as fine as could be.
The woman had short brown hair that curled into a mess and circular glasses which made her large, round eyes seem even larger. She wore a pristine white lab coat with a nametag that read 'Dr. V. Karolina, MD.' That was her name: Dr. Viola Karolina, Samus Aran's personal physician. And, for a long time now, close friend. She saved Samus' life on numerous occasions over the years, the famous 'fusion procedure' among her crowning achievements. Samus trusted her with her very existence.
Samus was fiddling with a pen, twirling it between her uncalloused fingers. They were shorter than her old fingers. Just a few millimeters, but it was still enough to have a perceptible impact on her pen-twirling ability. She dropped the pen numerous times, swearing each time. Luckily, her reflexes were fast enough so that she always caught it before it hit the ground.
"All right, you're all set," said Viola, sliding her hand as the screen blinked out of existence. "Ready to see the Commander?"
Samus dropped the pen again. She definitely needed more practice using this body. "I was ready half an hour ago."
"Half an hour ago you ripped out your own IVs, hit me in the face with a life pod door, and ran fifty meters before shouting at your own reflection. Needless to say, some checks on your mental health were warranted. Now, let's get going."
A Federation marine lifted Samus roughly by the shoulder. "This way, ma'am."
Samus sneered at him, and he backed off.
The halls were mirrored silver, and Samus couldn't help but stare at the unfamiliar image in the reflection as they passed through. She looked so different. Was this just the default template body, or something else? Did they even try to copy her old body?
Her hair was shorter, and now that she was dry it began to stick up in different directions. It reminded her of her days in the army, when she had to keep her hair short due to regulations. She hated it, but at least it was familiar. The rest of her was just too different. Her beauty marks were gone. Her eyes were a different color, a different shape even. And she might have been imagining it, but her skin looked a shade or two darker, too. And it wasn't just external appearances: her new body had practically negligent muscle mass due to being flash-grown in a vat. Her body was far weaker than she would have liked.
Viola caught her staring. "Is your new body not to your liking?"
"Couldn't you have made me look the same?"
"Well, about that. We don't exactly have any viable DNA of you on file. None we could have used to clone a body, anyway. You're a hybrid—were a hybrid. Still are. But in the hybridization process, your genes were sliced and spliced together in a way that caused some pretty vital developmental processes to malfunction. You were fine, since you were already grown, but if we tried growing a new body from what we had, you'd end up with no lungs, half a liver, and a completely unwrinkled brain, among other problems. And that's just the DNA from before the fusion procedure…"
"Okay, I get it." Just the thought of waking up disfigured, non-functional, and half-braindead was enough to make Samus reconsider her opinions on her current body. "So you had to make a new one from scratch. But why am I so short?"
"You're a bit taller than average, actually. Taller than me, at least. I didn't…" Viola's eyes darted away, avoiding Samus'. "Fine-tuning your body to your old specifications would have taken time we didn't have. I had to guess your height from memory. Among… other dimensions."
Oh, Samus thought. That explained quite a few things.
They continued on silently until they reached the Commander's office.
Commander Thrasa sat in her chair, flipping through paperwork projected holographically from her desk. She was a Garinian, and so her office on was custom-built to fit her large size. Even so, it still felt small sometimes. Garinians were a knuckle-walking species, and so their hands were proportionally larger than a more humanoid species', and that was something that slipped the architects' minds when they designed this up-scaled office. Maybe that Vincent Fawkes fellow has a point, Thrasa thought as she pinched her coffee cup with her thumb and forefinger, lifting it carefully to her lips. This galaxy was made for humans.
Thrasa's pointed ears twitched as her door slid open, revealing Dr. Karolina, Sgt. Cranes, and… stars, was that supposed to be Samus Aran?
She straightened in her chair, putting down her cup and swiping away her paperwork. "Come in, take a seat," she said. Because her species was so large, her voice was about as deep as a human male's, which often led to a lot more people than she could ignore calling her 'him.' Even completely non-humanoid species did that sometimes. It was a pet peeve of hers.
Viola turned to Samus and stuck her thumb towards the door. "Cranes and I'll be just outside if you need either of us." Samus nodded.
The door slid closed as the two of them left. Samus reached for the chair behind her, swiping at the air once before finally grabbing onto it. Thrasa frowned. Obviously adjusting to her new body was disorienting, but that was unacceptable. Samus needed to be in peak condition for her coming assignment.
Samus cleared her throat. "I was told you needed to see me, Commander?"
Thrasa nodded, giving Samus a quick glance-over. Her body looked too frail. Undercooked. Was she ready? "Do you know where you are?"
Samus nodded. "The Federation carrier GFS Cerberus, or so I've been told. We're currently in warp heading towards the Tartarus system."
Not bad. At least she knew that much. "That is correct. And do you know the status of the Tartarus system?"
Samus fidgeted in her seat, thinking of what to say. Thrasa had a tendency to go straight to the point of a situation, and was probably expecting a similar response. Samus didn't know exactly what was going on in the Tartarus system after she… died, but she could guess. "X-parasite run rampant?"
Thrasa nodded, her face grim. "And that's just the half of it. As you know the X can copy anything, and that includes technology. Shortly after you were incapacitated, the X got ahold of a drive-capable starship that was docked on TTRS-4A, resulting in a Code Amber, a worst-case scenario when it comes to the parasite. The X is now able to travel faster than light, and has spread throughout the entirety of the star system. For the sake of the galaxy, we were forced to quarantine the system on the orders of Councilor Fhel. There's a fleet of drone ships positioned around the system, poised to destroy any ship that tries to enter or leave via FTL."
Samus thought back to all the colonists on Thousand Songs. All those miners, and that poor little girl. Something about that situation struck a chord deep inside her, something that she couldn't quite describe. "What about the locals? Did they evacuate in time?"
Thrasa shook her head. "A few of them escaped, but the majority of them were unable to leave the system before the quarantine was enacted. And now, unfortunately, they're trapped inside. The parasite could be hiding dormant on any of their ships, or they could be X-infected ships masquerading as civilians. We have no way to tell, not at present anyway."
Samus leaned back in her seat and steeped her fingers together. "So where does that leave us? Aren't we about to enter the system?"
"We have a special exemption that lets us through the quarantine. Our drive has a special element that cloaks our warp signature. We'll slip by the drone fleet unnoticed, and hopefully leave that way as well. We are the last and only ship entering the system for a while, though."
Samus nodded. The measures were extreme, but understandably so. "So what's our goal, then? What do you want me to do?"
Thrasa tapped her desk, bringing up a holographic projection of TTRS-4A, the Moon of a Thousand Songs. "The goal of this ship and its crew is twofold: ensure the safety of the civilian presence within the system, and recover a valuable asset."
Samus frowned. That last part sounded like it might be her job, but Thrasa was being uncharacteristically vague. "What asset?"
"This asset is extremely valuable, the whole key to our success here. If we don't recover it, this whole situation could quickly spiral out of control, and the X could spread throughout the galaxy unchecked. It would be the end of civilization. Unfortunately, the asset is located in a highly dangerous-"
She wasn't answering the question. "Commander. What asset."
Thrasa sighed. It wasn't a sigh of frustration, or exhaustion, or even sadness, but simple anxiety and stress. She tapped her desk again, and brought up a hologram of the 'asset.'
"It's your body," she said. "We need to recover your body."
The corpse of Samus Aran lay at the bottom of a ravine, impaled on a crystal spike. She was limp and lifeless, her hands limbs draped behind her and her eyes and mouth open and slack in a permanent state of shock. Nothing around her lived for miles, but everywhere there was movement. Around her crawled spiders and creatures and worm-like things that were both alive and not alive, amalgamations of flesh and bone and sinew but no longer of cells or tissues or structural coherence.
More unlife-things formed structures that grew and pulsed and climbed the walls of the ravine like the chaotic scaffolding of a giant termite's nest or the armored insides of a star-whale, but around the crystals there was nothing but barren rock. They feared the crystals, these unlife-things, and their brilliant white glow. This glow seeped into every pore and decaying tissue of the corpse of the hunter, filling it with energy that it had not experienced in years. Energy, but not life, for that was something the crystals could not give. For that, something else was needed.
A massive shadow eclipsed the crimson sun, and the unlife-things scattered. The shadow opened, and a cone of luminance descended on the lifeless body of Samus Aran. The beam tugged and pulled, dragging her ever so slowly upwards, off the spire, into the shadow above. And then, the light was gone, and the crystal spire was bare save a few red stains smeared along its sides.
The shadow, done with its task, moved on. The unlife-things resumed their activities, unmoved by the events that transpired. The Eye of Hyperion watched silently from above, never to tell what it had witnessed. The galaxy kept on turning.
