Author's Note: Hi everyone. Just wanted to reach out again and thank you for reading this story. For those of you who have read the rest of the Human Series, you might notice there is something that happens in this chapter that ends up being important in the series later on. I won't give it away here, but if you happen to catch what it is, feel free to take a guess and I'll PM you and let you know if you caught it. :)
As always, feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you to those who have reviewed so far. And without further ado, I hope you enjoy chapter 7!
Chapter 7: A Hero
Samus rushed into the opening of mine as quickly as she could. It didn't have a large opening, and as soon as she got in, she found a busted-up elevator shaft that must have led down into the mines themselves.
She took a deep breath. If there was one thing she hated nearly as much as Space Pirates, it was mineshafts, and after being crushed by hundreds of pounds of soil back on Acteaon, she was hesitant to go underground again. Just standing at the top and looking down was making her feel dizzy, but she had a feeling that had less to do with the mine itself and more with her extreme exhaustion. She couldn't see the bottom, but she didn't care. Bracing herself for what was about to come, she took a leap of faith.
It was a long way down to the bottom of the shaft, and she felt a sharp pain shoot through her leg as she landed on one knee. A quick glance at her HUD let her know her shielding had taken a good bit of damage from the fall. Samus just ignored it. She was tired and wanted to get in and out of this mine as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the collapse must have knocked out all of the lights because it was dark as pitch in there. Switching to her x-ray visor, she set off into the remains of the mine.
The damage was severe. She didn't get five feet into the mines before she found half-caved in ceilings and twisted metal beams. Someone had definitely set off a bomb in the mine itself, and any indication of what they had been mining was long gone at this point. She wondered if it had anything to do with the facility Sylux had claimed to have destroyed.
Shooting any kind of beam or missile would be a terrible idea in a mine this severely damaged, not that it mattered anyway given that her arm cannon was still unusable. Her suit's arm was definitely trying to repair itself, but until she got a real chance to rest, her actual arm wasn't going to heal very much.
Approaching the first cave-in, Samus noted that she wouldn't fit through the opening in her current state, but fortunately for her, there was just enough space for the morphball to fit through. So she curled into her ball form just long enough to pass through a small opening in the debris. The room she entered, however, was even darker than the first and easily twice as treacherous.
There was no flat ground to walk on here. Samus didn't know how anyone could have survived. There were only hills and valleys of debris, segments of rebar jutting out every which way and twisted beams that groaned under the weight of the remaining earth above. Samus knew she didn't have much time in here.
She hurried through the room as quickly as she could without doing any damage to it. But trying to be careful as she scaled the uneven piles slowed her down considerably. By the time she mad it to the other side, she wasn't looking forward to heading into the third room. Fortunately the entryway to this one was less blocked and she didn't need to change into her morphball form.
She was wondering if anyone could have possibly survived a cave-in of this magnitude when she heard something deep within the third room. She couldn't be sure what it was, but she thought it sounded like a voice, a distinctly human one. And it was calling out to her.
It took a minute for her to be sure it was a real voice and not one of the long dead ones that had been echoing through her mind since her fight on Acteaon, but she was certain it was real as soon as she stepped into the room and used her thermal visor to detect a faint heat signature on the far end of the room.
There was a steep drop-off between her and where she saw the small, huddled form, and that small form was hidden beneath a mountain of debris that must have somehow fallen around the person rather than on top of whoever it was. The voice calling out was as small as the form in the heat signature, and Samus realized the person was a child.
Not sparing a moment to climb down the drop off, Samus took another leap into the pit, feeling the same pain shoot through her leg as the first time, but she ignored it. The child's cries were getting louder and louder as she approached where the kid was trapped. Her breath was coming more quickly, and in her exhaustion it was getting harder to differentiate between the cries of the child and the ghosts of her own cries back on K-2L.
"Help me!" the small voice called out between hoarse screams. "Please, please help me!"
"I'm coming!" Samus called back as she all but threw herself in front of the debris structure that housed the child. Looking in through a small opening using a light in her visor, she saw that its occupant was a very dirty and frightened looking little girl. She couldn't have been older than six or seven.
Upon seeing the armored visor of the bounty hunter the child screamed even louder, cowering in the far back of the structure.
"It's okay," Samus tried, coaxing the girl toward her. She knew she herself wouldn't be able to fit through the opening in the debris, not even if she used the morphball. "I'm here to rescue you. But I need you to come out to me."
The girl just screamed in huddled in the corner, visibly trembling at the sight of Samus.
"No!" the child called out, hiding her face in her knees. "No more aliens!"
"I'm not an alien," Samus replied, listening for the groaning of the twisted beams in the last room. "I'm a human, just like you."
It wasn't technically true, and she hated lying about something like that. But now didn't seem like the time for a more in-depth explanation.
"You're a monster!" the child yelled. "I'm not letting you get me!"
Samus frowned. She knew there was no way she was going to get into the structure without risking a collapse, thus killing the little girl. She needed the child to crawl out to her, but as long as she was in her armor that wasn't going to happen.
Against her better judgment, she pulled her helmet off and looked back into the opening.
"Look. Look at me, kid!" I'm just a normal human woman like your mom or whoever!"
But the girl just stared at her in horror, her eyes focused far more on the armored suit with its massive shoulders than they were on Samus's face.
Samus sighed, putting a dirty armored palm to her face. She hated the thought of it, but she knew what she had to do. Taking a deep breath, she deactivated her armor, leaving her in just her dark blue flight suit with the pistol holstered at her waist. Now it was so dark, she was forced to draw the gun and use its attached light to illuminate herself enough for the girl to see.
"Look, like I said before, kid. I'm human."
The little girl stared at her curiously, though she seemed less afraid.
"What happened to your face?" the child asked.
It took Samus a minute to realize the girl was referencing her phazon scars, which she had all but forgotten about.
"They're just scars," the hunter said softly. "I was hurt in the war."
"Space Pirates?" the girl asked, recoiling a bit at the name of the creatures.
Samus nodded. "Yes. Space Pirates. But I'm all right now. And I'm here to help you."
The little girl made a motion to crawl forward, but she was hesitant.
"It's okay," Samus said, trying to speak gently and realizing how weird the calming tone sounded coming out of her mouth.
The little girl crawled forward, eventually wiggling out of the opening in the debris structure. When she stood up at stared at Samus, the bounty hunter could see just how filthy the child looked. Despite all the dust, however, she could make out a bit of red hair and a hint of freckles.
"I need to carry you to safety. It's too dangerous in here. Can I pick you up?"
The girl looked over to Samus's right arm, which still hung uselessly at the hunter's side.
"I don't know," the girl said. "Can you?"
Samus huffed and nodded before scooping up the child in her left arm. "You're small. I don't need two arms to hold you. Just wrap your arms around my neck and your legs around my waist and hold on tight, okay?"
"Okay." The girl clung tightly to Samus as she buried her face in the bounty hunter's shoulder. Samus could feel her trembling, but she was thankful the girl was strong enough to hold on so tight. It was cumbersome trying to hold the child as well as the handgun with the attached light.
"I know it's dark in here and it's scary, but I just need you to be brave for a little while, okay? Don't panic. Just hold tight to me and I'll get us both out of here okay."
Samus hoped she wasn't lying to the kid. The cave-ins were devastating and there was a very real chance that the mines would totally collapse at any moment, but she had to try to get them both to safety before that happened. Without her suit, she definitely would not fair as well as she had back on Actaeon. And with the pains she could feel in her limbs as well as every time she took a breath, she knew her body had not faired all that well back on Actaeon.
The first hurdle was going to be getting up to the top of the pit she had jumped into to rescue the girl in the first place. Her vision was decent in the dark but not much better than a regular human's, and the drop-off was steep and treacherous. There were some edges and jutting pieces of rebar where it looked like she might be able to get hand and foot holds, but with only one functional arm and trying to balance both a child and the gun, she wasn't sure if climbing up was realistic. Still, she had to give it a try.
Letting go of the girl, she found the child had no problem clinging to her without Samus actually having to hold on to her. That was good, better than she had hoped. Sticking the gun with its attached light into her mouth, Samus began to climb up the side of the drop-off. There was no clear path to the top, particularly without a light to see, but she could feel where there were places for her to grab onto or step. She just had to hope none of them gave out under her weight. With only one arm, she was severely impaired and off balance as it was. In spite of all that, she managed to climb, pulling herself and the child up the side of the pit, dragging them both to the top despite her body protesting the exertion.
By the time Samus was standing on solid ground again, there was little doubt in her mind that her battle with Ridley had broken more than just her right arm. There were undoubtedly broken ribs somewhere, and something was going on with one of her legs. But she didn't have time to pay attention to that right now. As she rushed into the second room, she could still hear the steal beams groaning. There was dirt trickling from one part of the ceiling where it hadn't been the first time she had come through. Samus knew she needed to hurry.
Navigating the hills and valleys of debris had been hard enough alone and in her powersuit. Carrying the girl would normally be nothing to her, but she was exhausted and pretty beaten up already. The added weight, in addition to her dangling limb, was messing with her center of gravity.
At one point, a patch of debris collapsed under Samus's feet. The little girl screamed and almost let go as they both started to go down, but Samus caught the child and managed to stay on her feet. However, the sudden fall had thrown her momentarily off balance, and she managed to slice her upper left arm on some rusted rebar.
Samus grunted at the pain as blood dripped from her only good arm, but she pressed onward, using even more caution as she made her way through the rest of the treacherous room.
By the time she made it out to the first room of the mines, sweat was pouring down Samus's body and mingling with the blood from the gash on her arm. She needed to get them out of there as quickly as possible, a notion that was soon reinforced by the sounds of collapse back the way they had come. Samus had rescued the girl without a moment to spare.
There was only one obstacle left now. She had jumped down the mineshaft in her powersuit, but the way it was constructed left no hand or foot holds she could climb. Any elevator system that might have been there had been completely destroyed. She supposed she could have activated her power suit and attempted a space jump technique with the girl in her arms, but she didn't want to frighten the child worse than she already had been and it was a long way to travel upward in such a rapid spinning pattern. Samus decided against it.
"You still holding on tight?" she asked the kid.
The little girl nodded and tightened her grip around Samus's neck and waist.
"Okay good, because I need you to hold on as tight as you can now. I'll hold you too. We've got to get to the top of the mine shaft and it's a long way to fall if you let go."
The little girl made a soft crying noise as she clutched at Samus for dear life.
The bounty hunter just looked up at the long narrow shaft. It must have been at least fifty feet high, but she knew what she had to do.
Taking a running start, she launched herself at one of the walls of the narrow opening. Using all of her leg strength, she kicked off of that wall and launched herself at the one parallel to it. The little girl screamed as Samus pivoted midair and kicked herself off of the second wall and back to the first. She gained a little altitude with each wall kick as she climbed higher and higher up the shaft, constantly launching herself between the two parallel walls. The child didn't stop screaming the entire time, not even as they reached the top and stepped out of the mine.
Samus's leg and ribs were hurting terribly as she walked outside. She was panting heavily and absolutely drenched in sweat. Wall jumping was easy in her suit and usually not too bad without her suit, but she had never scaled fifty feet before without her armor. It had taken its toll on her, especially given her injuries.
She wasn't sure what she had expected to find once they finally made it outside, perhaps Sylux standing there waiting for a fight. The last thing she had expected was for most of the smoke to have cleared and for a crowd of people to be standing around watching her. As she saw all the humans staring at her and the child, her heart raced with a new spike of adrenaline.
"Cassandra!" a short red-haired woman called out suddenly as she ran toward Samus and the little girl.
"Mommy!" the girl called out, immediately perking up and reaching out to the red-haired woman. Once the woman was close enough, she all but snatched the child out of Samus's arms and pulled her into a tight hug. The two of them were soon joined by a pale man with dark hair, probably the child's father.
Samus could only look on silently, not sure what she was supposed to do with herself as the family was reunited. She couldn't relate to the situation. She'd never been through a disaster where all of her friends or family survived.
Most of the people had turned their attention to the reunited family, but a couple of people still stared at Samus. She knew she must have looked like Hell standing there bleeding, drenched in sweat, with one of her arms clearly broken.
After a while of standing in silence, one of the men approached her. He was a tall man, well dressed despite the dust they were all covered in. He was also as pale as the girl and her father, but his hair was a silver gray and he carried himself with the air of someone important.
"Who are you?" he asked as he studied Samus. "How did you get to this planet?"
Samus was quiet for a moment, dumbstruck about how to answer the question. Someone had undoubtedly seen her ship dock itself not far from where they were standing, and anyone who had seen it would have recognized it.
"You're Samus Aran, aren't you?" a stately-looking black woman asked as she stepped forward. "That's your ship we saw."
Samus wasn't sure what to say at this point. It would be almost impossible to plausibly deny her identity now, and she was so tired that her brain couldn't come up with even the dumbest of lies. So she just nodded instead.
"I knew it," the woman said with a big smile. "What someone as famous as you is doing on our planet, I have no idea, but we're just thankful you came when you did."
There was a buzz of excitement in the crowd, and all of the attention was making Samus nervous as people stared at her and talked amongst themselves.
"Hey Samus!" a younger woman's voice rang out and Samus instinctively turned to look at her. "Those scars on your face, are those from that phazon stuff?"
Samus touched the scarring around her right eye. "Yes… yes they are."
Then she realized someone was filming the interaction with a phone, and she covered her face as quickly as possible. There was no doubt video of that question was going to end up online, but she didn't have the wherewithal to deal with it right then. The edges of her vision were blurring, and the wave of dizziness had returned.
"Samus," the stately-looking woman said, reaching out and touching the bounty hunter's left forearm. "What happened down there? Are you all right?"
Samus just looked at her, unable to speak for a moment as the flash of cameras and the low roar of the crowd overloaded her senses.
Somehow, the woman seemed to realize what was happening, and she put a hand on Samus's back and began to lead her away from the crowd.
"Come on," she said in a gentle voice as she guided Samus away. "We need to get you out of here and to our hospital. We'll get you a private room and have some of your injuries looked at."
Samus didn't say anything. For a while, she just let the woman guide her down one of the streets and away from the site of the attack.
"It's not far to the hospital," the woman said as Samus realized the woman was roughly in her forties and dressed in a dust-covered red skirt suit.
"…Thank you," the bounty hunter managed after a few minutes.
"It's not a problem," the woman said as a small medical building came into view and she guided Samus toward it. "After all, you risked your life down in those mines and saved that little girl. You're a hero as far as everyone in this town is concerned!"
Samus didn't know how to respond to that so she just kept her mouth closed. She was too exhausted to argue with the woman.
