As Samus's ship came out of hyperspace, Samus noticed that they had come in behind a moon. Samus was unaware that Aliehs III had any moons. But this moon was keeping her hidden from most of the pirate fleet; a fleet for an attack that was, as she soon found out, no prank.

"Coming into scanning range of Aliehs III," Adam called. "It looks like Connehan was right; this is a large-scale pirate assault. Detecting several Pirate Galleons and Assault gunships. One troop frigate detected as well."

"Only one?" Samus wondered, checking the monitors. "Odd… maybe they won't invade, after all."

"All the better for us," Adam replied. "Charging weapons; standing by for your mark, lady."

Samus frowned. "I don't like it. They don't have a strong enough force to capture the planet, or to even destroy a fair bit of it. Even if they could destroy the shipyards, there are plenty of others that are just as good and as cheap that the Federation could use instead. What are the pirates playing at?"

"Who knows?" Adam said. "Look, there are too many possible reasons for the attack to count in an hour. We don't have an hour. A pirate interceptor is coming this way."

Samus looked at the radar monitor. A mid-sized ship, designed for speed and offensive capability, was coming quickly at them. Its weapons were fully charged, and it was moving on an attack vector.

"All right," Samus sighed. She would have time to muse later. Right now, her attention was needed in the present. She sat down in the ship's single chair. "Give me full tactical control," she called.

The monitors and controls in front of her lit up. The main monitor showed the happenings just in front of the ship. Samus took a bead on the interceptor, and fired.

Samus made precise calculations in her head as she aimed, and apparently, so did the pirates. They slowed down a fraction of an inch per second, and Samus's shot sped right by them.

"Crud," Samus said. "These guys are good."

She lowered weapon power, and increased rate of fire. She then re-aimed at the pirate ship, and began firing.

"Several direct hits, but minimal damage," Adam reported.

"How minimal?" Samus asked.

"Not too minimal," Adam replied. "A few more assaults like that will bring them down."

"Got it," Samus said. She opened fire again. The interceptor took several hits, but continued onwards. It was clear they wanted to get much closer to Samus than simple weapons range.

"Samus," Adam said suddenly, "I think the—mm—be tr—ing to sc-"

"Adam?" Samus yelled. "Adam!" The computer's synthesized voice had been replaced by broken static. She risked a glance at Adam's status screen; it was completely blank.

Samus thought for a moment. There were two ways that Adam could go offline in combat. The first one that came to her mind was combat damage to a computer terminal. But the pirates hadn't even fired at them.

Another thing that would knock him offline was a computer scan…

Samus looked down at her monitors. All of the ship's records were flashing across them. The pirates were scanning her, all right, but why?

Then, something popped onto the main screen, and stayed there. It was the ship's registry files. That's what they were after; they wanted to know whom the ship belonged to.

And Samus had a good idea of why.

The monitors flashed back to normal, and Adam's broken voice became intelligible again.

"Samus, they–"

"I know, I know," Samus yelled. "Transfer all shield and propulsion power to weapon fire rate and power!"

"Done!" Adam said. "Take them out, fast. That's an order!"

Samus hastily took a bead on the pirate interceptor. The ship was in full retreat. She fired off a scattershot of her ship's primary cannons at full power. Several of the shots hit the interceptor. It was destroyed in a matter of seconds.

"That got it," she announced.

"Not before they sent a message to the rest of the fleet," Adam reported, sadly. "They know who you are, and they know you're here."

Samus checked her radar. Every blip on the screen was moving towards the last known position of the pirate interceptor.

"Crud," Samus muttered. "Adam, full power to engines and rear shields! We have to get to the rest of the federation fleet before anything else happens!"

The ship started moving at full power towards the safety of the federation armada, away from the wreckage of the interceptor. Samus diverted her main weapons power back to rear shielding, thinking that any hostile vessels would come up from behind.

She was right. Several Pirate destroyers were pulling up behind her.

"Crud!" Samus growled. "Adam, activate a distress beacon. Backup all of the ship's archives in the Black Box, and erase all the originals."

"Done," Adam announced after a short delay. "Samus, you don't think…"

"I don't know," Samus said. "As long as I can take down one more pirate with me, I'll be content, but…"

Samus was cut off by weapons fire from the ships to their rear, and the shipped rocked as it took a hit.

"A hit!" Adam yelled. "Heavy damage to the hull!"

"Turn us around," Samus called. "Take all power from all non-essential systems to front shields and weaponry!"

"Lady, you can't mean to take them on!"

"There's no way we can make it back to the fleet if they keep firing," Samus said. "This is our only chance."

The lights in the cockpit turned off for a second, and were quickly replaced by the eerie red glow of the emergency lights. Samus looked down at her suit's arm cannon. The cowardly pirates attack by ship, she thought. If we were actually battling, one-on-one…

Her train of thought was interrupted, as her ship's alarms blared that the enemy ship was locking on to her. Samus pulled the ship upwards, and the pirates' attack passed harmlessly beneath her gunship. Then, the ship alerted her again to an enemy lock-on. Samus was too close this time to dodge; the pirates got a direct hit on her. Samus was thrown from her seat. Many parts of the ship took massive damage.

But none were destroyed. Odd… with that last blast, the pirates could have destroyed me if they wanted to.

Does that mean… they don't want to?

Samus's mind raced. She thought back over the years, over her various incursions into the Pirate bases. The Phazon mines on Tallon IV; that's what her mind was going back to. A computer she had scanned, a Pirate logfile…

…eliminated, preferably in a manner that her armorsuit may be recovered, intact…

The pirates were after her Fusion suit. She couldn't allow them to get it.

"Adam," she whispered, "I'm sorry."

"What? Lady, wha–"

Samus pressed a button on her control panel. The ship's black box, containing all of the ship's logs and Adam's main program, was jettisoned, and all of Adam's presence on the ship was removed. Samus knew the pirates wouldn't be able to spot it, and the computer program might be helpful to the Federation in the future.

Samus pressed one more button: the emergency self-destruct auto sequence.

"Five seconds," she called to the ship's auxiliary computer.

"Five-second countdown set," the feminine voice of the computer replied. "Five."

One of the pirate galleons fired. The shot, racing towards her ship, seemed to be moving in slow motion.

"Four."

The shot struck. The pirates were still shooting to disable her. Something was jarred loose outside the ship, but the vessel remained mostly intact.

"Three."

Something floated by Samus's window; the part of the ship that had been blasted off. Samus looked at it, casually at first, but then in horror, as she realized what it was.

"Two."

The ship's self-destruct mechanism was floating away, held only by a pair of command wires leading to the bomb.

"Abort! Abort!" she cried.

"One."

The computer didn't respond. The command cables leading to the bomb were unable to cancel a countdown; simply to execute it.

There was no "Zero." The world simply exploded around Samus.

She stayed conscious long enough to remember a few things. The bomb was too far from her ship to destroy it, but caused massive damage to all the systems. The crippled rolled through space, caught in the gravitational pull of a small moon. Samus felt the extreme heat of entering the atmosphere; the outer hull was mostly burned away, but remained intact enough to keep her alive. Then, at last, with the impact of a meteor, the ship struck down, and she saw nothing but darkness.