"WARNING. HOSTILE SHIP APPROACHING."
"Not now," she sighed. But these things rarely happened at opportune moments.
She felt the heaviness as the ship shifted course. She hated leaving that thing back here alone, but she didn't have much choice. The ship's autopilot could only do so much without her.
She took her place in the cockpit, interface blaring with an alert. She couldn't see anything from the deck. The ship's radar told her that whatever it was, was coming in from behind. She wheeled her gunship around to face it, missiles armed.
It felt ridiculous piloting like this; zero suit half off and tied 'round her waist with nothing but a tank top on beneath. She should be in her suit. This ship was designed to be piloted while inside it. Aiming was hard, maneuvering more difficult, but the Hunter did it nonetheless. She locked on to the incoming ship and was ready to fire.
The enemy stopped just out of range. It seemed to be staring her down. Sleek and silvery with a twinge of green, its nose and stern forming an 'X'. She recognized it right away, for she had fought its pilot before.
But he wasn't firing. Wasn't moving. Just idling, as though surprised she had noticed his presence. What was he waiting for?
Samus suddenly became aware of a low, rhythmic whirring. It came followed by the hiss of escaping air.
"WARNING. HULL BREACH."
What? Where?! How? The enemy had not even fired.
A loud, metallic creak rocked the ship, and the Hunter looked behind in horror as the docking platform came loose and unhinged from beneath her ship. A beady pair of robotic eyes looked up from the hole, its fingers hot from welding. She felt she almost recognized the thing from Elysia.
The ship's defense systems flared to life, blasting a wall of hardlight against the breach. Lights began to flash red. The shield would not last forever, and when it ran out, she would be exposed.
SLASH! The enemy ship used her distraction as an opening. One of the engines was compromised.
This was insane. How did that tiny robot get past security protocols? Why did he even have one like it? How did he know exactly where to target?
The strikes continued to come. SLASH! A sizeable crack through to the pilot's deck. SLASH! Another gaping hole behind far behind her. CRASH! The quarantine bay's carefully aligned pods shattered all in one go. The specimen followed the shards of glass through one of the quickly-emptying holes in the ship's hull. The hardlight keeping the biggest hazard at bay gave out, and the force of the suction tore the Hunter from the cockpit.
My suit! If she could just get to it now, maybe it would accept her. It had to. She'd cleared the corruption, what other reason could it have to continue to malfunction? She wouldn't be able to get it properly calibrated in conditions like this but she could at least get inside it before it was too late. The pull of the vacuum was intense, and it was all the Hunter could do to latch on to anything she could find that was firmly attached to the ship's walls.
Pull by pull, she climbed her way to the deck, where her suit lay waiting. She could feel the wind tearing at her skin and making it difficult to see.
Almost there. She could see the verdant glow of her chest piece. The familiar cannon and steely orange shoulders. She reached. With one hand she reached forward against the current of air. Almost, almost. The tip of her finger just barely scraped the crimson chassis when a metallic screech filled the air. The headrest of the pilot's chair ripped free of its foundation and came hurtling towards the Hunter's head. It came far too quickly for her to react, and with a clang it knocked her straight back. She lost her grip on the ship and flew towards the hull breach.
She had been so close. Suddenly she started to think of everything she could have done differently.
Cold, space was so cold. The bright interior of the ship had disappeared so quickly, replaced by an endless sea of stars.
Why didn't I try sooner?
It was so cold.
Why did I waste so much time…
It felt as though a thousand claws were squeezing into her chest. The wind was knocked out of her faster than she could even realize it. No air. Nothing, and it was so cold.
This couldn't be it. This couldn't be how it ended. She was going to take that denial to her grave, it seemed.
Black, cold, quiet. Her starship was so small now, trailed by a stream of debris as the silvery green ship latched on with a tractor beam and carried it away.
They disappeared. Everything did. An infinite stretch of black soon engulfed all things around her, until not even the stars shone through it.