METAL GEAR SOLID: THE NOVELIZATION

by Alex Greene, aka Pika132

Disclaimer: Metal Gear and all that is Metal Gear © Konami and/or Kojima Productions

Author's Note: Here we are, folks—the thrilling conclusion. Ho ho ho!

EPISODE ONE: STEEL DAWN

Chapter Twenty-One: Nec Dextrorsum, Nec Sinistrorsum

Solid Snake had passed his regular psych evaluations every time they'd come around. Ink blots revealed a lonely but mentally stable man who sought solace in the brotherhood and camaraderie of the armed forces. His one vice of cigarettes notwithstanding, Snake was more than a good soldier. He was a good person.

Yet as he stood there in the rising hangar, no music was sweeter or more satisfying to him than the horrendous, violent noises of Metal Gear's self-destruction. The super tank that had been such a threat for so long was literally going up in smoke, along with all the Commander's visions of a world in flames.

Snake stood for a few moments, taking it all in, before it occurred to him to take cover. The hangar had been traveling towards the surface much faster than the elevator from before, and as the platform emerged from the desert sands, Snake beat feet back towards building 3, a few hundred yards to the south.

He made it about half the way there when he was knocked off his feet by a blast wave. With a final, climactic fireball, Metal Gear was blasted into a million pieces. A single, glorious plume of massive flame shot into the air. Snake watched it with a new sense of wonder.

As in, "I wonder how high that thing is going to go."

The plume kept skyrocketing into the air, and the shrapnel and debris fell away from it to reveal the dying machine's last gasp: a small nuclear missile. The missile began to shift course into a parabola as it screamed towards the ARK at four thousand kilometers per hour.

Snake suddenly found himself utterly calm. There was no fear. There were no thoughts of "I've failed" or "The Commander has won". Only "I've got to get to the ARK".

Someone grabbed Snake from behind and spun him around. Snake went for his MP5, but it wasn't there—must have dropped it somewhere back in the wreckage.

"Good reflexes, kid," said Big Boss, standing before Snake. "Now get in the chopper. We've got some heads of state to protect."

The bridge of the ARK, twelve minutes later

"Son, this order is non-negotiable. You need to get the President and everyone else off this hunk of junk." demanded Big Boss.

Lt. Admiral David Shepard, US Navy, ret., shook his head. "Even if I were willing to comply with such a drastic order from a bunch of spooks—and don't think for a second that I am—the ARK just doesn't have the emergency systems necessary for an evacuation. Not enough lifeboats for even a third of the guest VIPs."

"What about the escort ships? There's two cruisers and a battleship on standby, right?"

"Full to capacity already. They're at full capacity so we can fight off any pirates or other sea threat. There are two fighters on deck to engage any aircraft who come after us. Should the aircraft fail, we have a missile defense system that will shoot down any standard ballistic ordinance and cause it to detonate harmlessly 100 feet above us." Snake tried to interject, but Shepard just kept talking. "Finally, the Secret Service and equivalent security agencies from all guest countries are out in force, in addition to a hefty supply of UN troops. So why don't you tell me what exactly is such a great threat that we need to ignore all these defense measures and evacuate the whole damn ship?"

Big Boss gazed at Shepard for a moment, then suddenly turned away, defeated. Snake followed him out the door to the deck. There was silence between them as Snake followed the old soldier into the helicopter. Finally Snake piped up, "Orders, sir?"

"None," said the old soldier. "It's over. We're going home." He put on his headset and began strapping on his parachute. "Start this thing up," he shouted to the helicopter pilot, and the rotor blades began to whir above them.

Snake opened his mouth, closed it, took a breath, donned his headset. "Sir, if I may—"

"You may not, damn it!" Big Boss's voice was suddenly full of volcanic fury as thirty years' worth of suppressed emotion exploded. "You may notspeak freely, you may not serve your country, you may not pass Go and collect two hundred dollars. No, you and I are going to sit by and watch as the leaders of the so-called free world are blown to smithereens because of their own complacent arrogance and bureaucratic bullshit. God knows they had it coming, but it was us who swore oaths to put our lives on the line to defend them. And we failed! I did my damnedest to keep this whole mess off the President's radar because he didn't want to know, and we didn't want him to want to know. But then this ARK bullshit comes up and we have to warn him, and he doesn't want to listen. Then Schneider decides to jump ship while he still can, and it's all over.

"I'd love to tell you the same shit probably happened in every one of these stuck-up Eurotrash countries, but no. The US got this intel, the US went in to fix the problem, like we always do, and the US is going to take the fall for it. And we deserve it! America, the world's policeman! America, the land of the free and the home of the brave! I love this damn country. If I could bleed white and blue as well as red when I get shot, I would. I swore to defend her against all enemies, and God knows I've tried, but I can't save her from herself. Every day I woke up dreading this day. And here we are, the inevitable end of the American empire. Europe will crumble without us to prop it up, and the Russians will move in. Africa and South America won't even bother with civilization anymore; they'll just go back to being slaughtered by tribal warlords. Japan might survive, but who gives a shit about them really? China and India will be on top all of a sudden, and then...well, I just hope you like MSG and mango chutney," finished Big Boss, turning to Snake for the first time.

There was a long pause as Big Boss composed himself. A peculiar thought arose, unbidden, in Snake's mind; he tried to fight it off but found it too intriguing to ignore. Finally, Snake voiced his concerns.

"Sir, how did you know about Schneider?"

Big Boss looked at Snake, but did not answer.

"How did you know about Schneider?" Snake pressed.

"I was the one feeding him bad intel," replied Big Boss plainly.

Snake didn't even register this news for a moment; finally, it hit him with the force of a mortar shell.

"Yeah, that's right, kid," said the man also known as the Commander. "And I guess you did pretty well in there, right up to the moment I got you into a helicopter with me. By the way, I have a .45 in my other hand and the pilot's one of mine; don't try anything funny."

Snake was utterly still. This wasn't happening; it wasn't real. The greatest soldier in the world wasn't a traitor to his country and the leader of a rogue state.

Big Boss kept talking. "Schneider was a red herring; it was me pulling the strings in Outer Heaven, feeding the resistance information. Your purpose was to rescue Fox. The minute I had a way to get him out of there without exposing myself, you were expendable. Shotmaker's orders were to kill you and let Fox kill him. Of course that didn't work, so I sent the Machinegun Kid and then the helicopter to take you out. Bison was supposed to kill Madnar first to trip you up, but by that point I figured anyone going after you was as good as dead."

"Your men would have sacrificed themselves to kill me? Just like that?"

"It's easy if you've got a cause to believe in. Well, sacrifice anyway. Killing you was getting pretty damn tough," grinned the traitor.

"So is this about religion then? You're destroying the free world in the name of God?"

"I'm saving the world," screamed Big Boss. "I'm cleansing it of the evil of democracy, and I'm sure as shit not doing it for a higher power. I'm doing it for us, the soldiers, the ones who fight and die in war and get swept under the rug during peacetime. Soldier's can't function like that. We need someone to give us orders and tell us who to kill. That's Outer Heaven...a place where soldiers can be soldiers."

"And terrorists can be terrorists, and everybody else can be collateral damage. That about right?" retorted Snake.

Big Boss sputtered and began to turn purple. Suddenly, he was in Snake's face with the .45. In his eyes Snake thought he saw something more terrifying than the cold metal at his forehead.

"You are very lucky," the old man hissed, "that I didn't intend to kill you outright." He took a breath. "Since you've done so well at destroying all my years of planning, I'll give you a choice of what will happen next."

Snake felt his mind gearing up for action once again. He slowly nodded

With his left hand, Big Boss took out a small device that looked like a calculator, his eyes never leaving Snake's."I have the code to detonate the missile early, and if you ask politely, I will enter it, saving the ARK. Once the code is entered, I will kill you, and you'll die knowing that I will try again, and I'll still have my cover. The other choice—" he slid open the door behind him—"you kill me and prevent me from taking power, knowing that hundreds of thousands will probably die in the transition, and that the President and his fellow heads of state will be among them. Plus, my man here will testify that you ambushed me, so you'll go down in history as a traitor. What'll it be, Snake?" He pressed the .45 to Snake's forehead again and drew back the hammer. "Oh, and I'll kill you anyway if you take too long to decide."

Snake did not hesitate. "Enter the code."

Big Boss let out a humorless laugh. "I thought so. You didn't really have a choice at all, did you?" As he brought the device up to his face, Snake seized it and threw it out the door. While Big Boss gaped, Snake punched him across the jaw and went for the gun, which fired once, hitting the pilot, who slumped over at his controls. As the chopper began to roll to the right, Snake kicked at Big Boss one, two, three times and finally sent him flying out the door. Snake scrambled into the pilot's seat and fumbled with the controls, fighting to keep the chopper in the air. As the machine climbed, the sensors starting shrieking about an incoming missile and urging him to deploy countermeasures.

Snake pressed the stick forward, sending the machine zooming towards the oncoming missile.

"There's always a choice," he murmured, and bailed.

Epilogue

The security personnel on the ARK did their jobs admirably; all of the VIPs were belowdecks by the time the shockwave from the blast hit the boats. All passengers and crew survived with minor injuries at worst. The warhead was only 5 kilotons, so the radiation damage was minimal.

MICHAEL DRUMMOND's propensity for being in the wrong place at the wrong time worked in his favor: he was in the residential sector of Outer Heaven and, posing as a civilian, narrowly avoided prosecution. He drifted north and eventually took a job at a mall in Cairo...as a security guard.

DRAGO PETTROVICH MADNAR was tried for war crimes and acquitted, on the grounds that he was coerced. He and his daughter are currently seeking political asylum in the United States, though his application is pending.

KYLE SCHNEIDER was found barely breathing in the back of a truck during the UN peacekeeping forces' raid of Outer Heaven. He had been severely beaten and shot twice in the back, and remains in a coma in a South African hospital.

JENNIFER FREEMAN and DIANE SEGAL were spared in the spate of perfunctory trials that extended to even low-level Outer Heaven officials. In June 1996, they expatriated to America. Diane now works at a TV news station, and Jennifer is a martial arts instructor.

BIG BOSS's body was never found. Roy Campbell, who received the report of Operation Intrude N313, is now in command of Special Operations FOXHOUND.

SOLID SNAKE was found a few days after the Outer Heaven debacle by a cargo ship passing around the Cape of Good Hope. He suffered moderate radiation poisoning and was evacuated by helicopter to Johannesburg. He remained in hospital custody for three weeks before being released to the US Embassy. He worked for FOXHOUND for two more years before abruptly resigning in 1997 and disappearing.

Chapter Notes: Aaaaaand it's over! Obviously the ending here is very different from the game, where after fighting Metal Gear, Big Boss attacks you in the very next room. Also, the political angle is all mine; none of the ARK stuff is in the game.

Future Plans: So forget the Metal Gear Saga stuff...it ain't gonna happen, at least not the way I planned. I will almost certainly do Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. MGS1 has a novelization already, written by Raymond Benson...yeah, it's not very good; I may try my hand at it MGS2 and 3 are more iffy. MGS4...no. The portable games I'm undecided on. My next project will NOT be a Metal Gear title at all; I want to try something different. For now, though, I'm gonna take a long, long break from fanfiction...