Well, shit, Molly thought as she strapped on her torso armor, checking each seal to ensure that she was as covered as she could be. How the mighty have fallen. Like any organized criminal, she'd heard of Aran, mostly through word-of-mouth among her and the Crew's peers. Some of her own footsoldiers had served in smaller outfits that the bounty hunter had taken down and broken apart over the years, carving a path through them like they were little more than grass twitching in the wind.
"Couple of things you should know about Aran, captain," said Hammer, handing Molly a balanced ion blaster pistol, which she holstered while the others in their boarding party continued their own preparations. "She's a Svestri, first of all, second-generation. That means sonic weapons aren't going to work, and she's faster and stronger than she might look. That's if she's not wearing that fucking powered suit of hers," the cathus grumbled, looking over at Digger. Digger, who had for a while been their primary mechanic, was a narrow human with a complexion so pale he could be mistaken for a walking sheet of paper, and eyes more sunken than an ancient Earth pirate ship taken down by a superior naval power. "Digger, where's your armor," Hammer asked.
"I got it, I got it," the former mechanic said nasally, grabbing his own armor off of the gear racks and shifting into it. Molly noted that the man wasn't exactly going through the motions like he was supposed to, half-assing his preparations.
"Anything else we should know about Aran, or about these, what did you call her," Molly asked.
"Svestri," said Hammer. "They're very rare, only a couple dozen of them across the known systems. The current generation are the offspring of genetic experiments, and no two are exactly alike in terms of capabilities. But they share some common traits," said the cathus. "Enhanced speed and strength, like I said, and an immunity to sonic weaponry. They also seem to heal from injury quicker than most folks. Now, anything else, I'm not sure of, because those are the only things that seem universal among all of them."
"Understood," said Molly as the Dozer rocked a little. The docking clamp had fixed into position, meaning that soon, they would be rushing the gunship to see if they could take Aran down without destroying her ship at range. "Wrench, can you tell us anything about her power suit?" Molly, Digger, Hammer and Rivet all turned their attention to the petite, curly-haired redhead in her grimy olive green coveralls, a small datapad in her hand, virtual goggles strapped over her eyes. She smiled at them nervously, and Molly wondered, briefly, if Wrench's freckles flared more redly when she felt put upon, or if that was merely a trick of the light in the docking set chamber.
"It's a Mark IV Adams-Nelling Power Armor, but heavily modified by the user," Wrench began. "The blast plating makes the user immune to most small-arms fire, but needlers can still slip through the connector gaps in the plating. The arm cannon's primary firing mode is a kinetic fusion orb, which fires more slowly than the standard blaster, but can cut through most light armor with no problem. You guys'll be fine, though, since Hammer augmented your armor vests with diffuser plates."
"You're welcome," the cathus said with a nod at his comrades.
"And remember to be on the lookout if the arm cannon's tip changes outward appearance," Wrench cautioned. "Users can input all kinds of variations of firing capability, and each one is signaled by an outer shift in appearance of the cannon's tip. One last thing, captain," Wrench said. Molly rolled her eyes, sensing what was coming by taking one look in the mechanic's big doe eyes. "I think this is a bad idea."
"Wrench, honey, we're going to be just fine," Molly said, waving the others toward the panel door on their end of the docking tube. She stepped up to Wrench and put her hands on the mechanic's hips, giving them a light squeeze. "I'll be right back to you, okay?" Wrench looked down demurely, peeping up and grinning.
"Okay." She gave Molly a quick kiss for luck, and the captain of the Wrecking Crew followed after the others, ready to deal with Samus Aran. Or so she hoped.
Rivet had been a soldier for the Petari Empire in his youth, a sergeant leading teams of headstrong, war-cry shouting barbarians into the fray dozens of times. He had lost plenty of men, and killed more than his fair share before the Empire's collapse and his own flight to what passed for more 'civilized' systems. Most folks he'd come across were soft things, even among this organization he'd signed on with eventually.
Something he'd encountered on several occasions, both as a soldier and as the unnamed head of security forces for the Wrecking Crew, was the takeover of an enemy vessel once it was crippled. The encounters never varied much; the docking tube would secure from his own ship to the enemy's, he'd lead a boarding party over, they'd lose a scout who got too eager and jumped ahead, and then they would swarm the victims with overwhelming force. It was ever the same, becoming routine.
This, however, was anything but routine. Not only was he not in charge of the boarding party, but the 'victim', if ever such a word could be assigned to Samus Aran, was not apparently content to try hunkering down in her own damaged ship. When they were still twenty yards away in the low-gravity docking tube, Aran's docking door whooshed open, and several shipping containers came floating out toward them.
"What the fu-," he managed before something came out right behind the crates, something that looked more machine than man. Twisting in sync with the crates she'd hoisted into the tube, the bounty hunter took careful aim from behind her bizarre cover, and opened fire on the group, three rapid shots. One of the blob-like bullets whizzed by them, narrowly missing all members of the Crew, but the second shot glanced Hammer's vest, tossing him back toward the Dozer with a grunt, and the third one pelted Digger, who was closest to Aran, pushing him back into Molly in a tangle of arms and legs.
Rivet holstered his own blaster pistol and took out the ion blaster, taking careful aim at the crates. He only needed one good shot to disrupt the bounty hunter, but Aran's movements were now masked by both the crates and Molly and Digger, who were trying to push off of one another. Digger ended up propelling himself toward Aran's end of the tube, firing blindly at the bounty hunter.
"Digger, don't," Hammer shouted, but too late. Aran popped out of cover for just a moment, long enough for Rivet to see that, like Wrench had warned, the end of her suit's arm cannon had changed shape. Digger, confident that his armor would hold up still, tried to plant his feet and take a shot, which ended up being absorbed with a fluctuation of light by Aran's armor.
Her own pencil-thin beam of crimson energy, fired from an angled tip at the end of the cannon, didn't hit Digger's vest at all; instead, it pushed a solid cylinder of flesh, brain and bone right out the back of the former mechanic's head. The man was dead before he could even drift to the tube floor in the low gravity, blood and cerebral fluids streaking into the air between Aran and the Crew.
"Fuck this," Hammer shouted, throwing something toward the bounty hunter and propelling himself back toward the Dozer, grabbing Molly by the arm as he drifted and dragging her along with. Rivet, taking the hint, also pushed himself away, and a moment later, there erupted a sound like thunder, accompanied by the expansion of a black cloud limned with crackling green energy. When the visual effect ended. Samus Aran could be seen drifting toward them, her body limp in her armor.
"Well why the hell didn't you use that first thing," Molly barked, slapping Hammer on the arm.
"Ouch, knock it off, captain," he whined, rubbing her exposed upper arm. "I forgot I had one on me, I panicked when she came out at us. Who the fuck does that, anyway," he asked. Rivet stomped toward the bounty hunter's limp form, grabbing it by the cannon arm and pulling it along behind him, the end of the weapon carefully tucked through so that the end couldn't fire on him if she should wake up.
"She does," he grunted, leading the way back aboard the Dozer.