Chapter 16

Halls of the Dead

...

Samus walked into the Temple of the Hunter, her footsteps echoing off the cold stones. Soon she left behind the cavelike gloom of the entrance gate, and stepped into a dim yellow light filtering from unseen sources. The tall door remained open behind her, letting through the faint sound of wind and the distant swish of Ridley's wings in the tunnel. The murderer flew away, winging slowly towards his future death like so many others of his identical kind. After killing him again and again, over the year Samus had let herself grow weary of his monstrosity. However, she had to admit this particular example had managed to light those flames anew.

This temple passage was narrow but absurdly high ceilinged. The walls were painted and carved with ancient Chozo, bowing with palms spread in greeting. Between them the engraved words called out praise for the innovation and industry that took place here. They promised it would continue for ten million years. According to Samus' estimation they had missed their mark by 9.8 million.

Even before the Chozo discovered immortality they had been a cocky bunch. At the height of the Empire, augmentation technologies already meant that five hundred years of life was not unheard of. And unlike some of the galaxies more natural methuselahs, it was not the sessile existence of a glacial metabolism, but centuries of life brimming with incredible activity. By their biology Chozo loved motion, a constant change in activity or thought. Untamed by philosophy, that nature filled them with an incredible drive for greatness.

Any type of greatness.

A touch to her helmet and the next door lock slid open. Samus walked though into a circular chamber, marked on the floor with stripes of dim green illumination that rippled gently. With the black roof above, the dark room felt like being upside-down underwater. A single slab of stone stood in the center and there was a door behind it but still Samus looked around to glare at the round room's lack of corners. She had long since learned to distrust places that seemed simple.

Nothing attacked her immediately, and if there was anything invisible then it was cloaked from infra-red as well. She cautiously walked up the standing slab, covered in shimmering Chozo writing. Her visor scanned and recorded it for later, but Samus doubted she would need to refer to it. These words stuck in her memory.

"We set this here for those we leave behind; the monsters and the fearful. Those who built this place are already gone and we tarry but a moment later. We will not say why. Our reasons are useless to you, leaving only our greed for endless light. Forgive us for what we did to you."

A single line lay at the bottom of the plaque, almost a postscript.

"The door is still open."

Samus felt her breath rise in her chest. This message was only decades old, dating to the Chozo abandonment. In that it was alone, a fresh monument placed in an ancient room. To any non-chozo who had studied the language, that cryptic message would have been fascinating enough. However, Samus saw something else. The precise shape and serifs of the "you" glyph; it was singular, and it was personal. The writer knew the person they were speaking to. The path had shown them someone likely to read it, and if Samus was right in noticing the trends of the last few days then there were two prime suspects. She was only one of them.

A query to the downloaded Federation database instantly gave the answer what she was looking for. There were three of these plaques, all identical and originally placed in each of the three main entrances to the temple, though the one at the front door had been removed by human researchers. Samus' database search also revealed a series of suit alerts she was not looking for. They came from within the partitioned section of the suit systems. It seemed "Adam" had something to say.

Samus eyed the notifications in the corner of her view. Looking at the timestamps, they matched up with her entering the temple and the message slab coming into view. That narrowed down her list of possible explanations for the 'Adam' malfunction. The probability of a virus implanted by the Federation plummeted as those triggers would make no sense. It all could be an artifact of Samus abruptly halting Adam' download at 52%, or the Last could have left a hidden packet of malicious code in the Pirate command ship computers, hoping for some contact with other living Chozo rescuers. That option was possible and almost preferable. The alternative was...deeper.

This suit was a gift from the high temple in Zebes, long decades ago. Even though it had been torn apart and rebuilt so many times since then, the core remained the same, one set down before she was even born. Samus knew that the science of prophecy was generally concerned with more statistical probabilities and by necessity got more uncertain the farther from the origin it looked. However, in any pattern there are sometimes islands of clarity, instances far in the future where known factors will inevitably collide in predictable ways. Discovering those islands was the mastery of the Chozo.

The first suit glitch had been when she looked on this planet with her own eyes. At this point Samus would have much preferred if Nakamura messed with Adam during the trial. That would be better than having to contend against yet another faction, long dead Chozo reaching out from the throughs of deep prophecy. It was much harder to shoot enemies who refused to reside in the same era of time.

After a brief moment's pause, Samus cued up the message from 'Adam'.

"(Definition) Monsters: dangerous or cruel creatures; creatures that did not arise from natural evolution; creatures of exceptional size or power."

Samus gave a mental sigh. Thank you, Adam-Thing.

"I said exceptional. Do not instill your own emotion on unliving words."

She stopped, then continued to walk. There were really too many people telling her what to think right now.

Samus stepped though the far doorway in this same dark mood and so was almost blinded by a flash of light. Her weapon rose and fired a smoking shot before she realized that she had just walked into the middle of a holographic display. A step backwards revealed glowing Chozo letters hovering in the air

"Have patience for the welcome."

Samus frowned. It was not that she expected Chozo messages to be perfectly intelligible, but this holographic blurb lacked the florid wording and gravitas that usually provoked the confusion. By Chozo standards it was brusk and infuriatingly ungrammatical.

After a few seconds the floating words withdrew, sliding backwards through the air into the room. Samus cautiously followed at its slow walking pace, keeping a close eye on the walls and corners. There were power sources behind the walls and ceiling, operating the holographic emitters and some other technologies, but nothing immediately presented itself. Samus was simply experiencing a tour down a long featureless corridor of metamorphic stone guided by a bit of odd grammar.

It was possible that the architects intended there to be living personnel on staff here to provide the expected welcoming committee. Samus could not immediately figure out any other use for this corridor. As it was, there was only fire-hardened rock and a few decorative metal panels on the walls.

Then, half way down the wall the floating words stopped and blinked into a new configuration.

"Scan Complete"

Samus immediately had new ideas of what this corridor could be for.

"Weapon authorization recognized"

She breathed out again. Her parents' gift had helped once again. At least the temple's remaining systems recognized their own.

"Biological contamination detected. Have patience for incineration."

And they expected only Chozo to be wearing it. Chozo scans saw through a Chozo suit to the decidedly Earthish cells that still constituted the vast majority of Samus Aran. She sighed. Just once it would be nice for some group to not regard her as alien.

Even a brief moment later, room was already incredibly hot. The metal panels on the walls glowed red on their way to orange as the hidden emitters bombarded the room with cooking heat. Samus dashed on to the far end of the hall but as she expected the door there was shut, refusing to open to scan, blaster, or repeated punching.

A little icon in the corner of her visor began to display the suit's growing concern about the outside temperature. In its current state Samus would not survive much more of this escalation.

So Samus decided to return to the middle of the corridor and wait patiently. The metal wall panels were now glowing bright white with terrible heat. Any contamination hitching a ride on the outside of a Chozo battle suit would have long since been burnt away, so the question was what the security program would do now that it still detected pesky human cells. Samus was banking on the Chozo flair for the dramatic. The suit's interior temperature was now one hundred and fifty degrees. A standard human would have already been dead.

Then the metal wall panels slid open and massive jets of fire blasted into the room. Perfect.

Samus bolted forward, plunging down the throat of the inferno. The suit screamed its warning as shield battery levels dropped off a cliff, and even the ice beam blast she fired off barely lessened the roaring conflagration that continued to beat against her. But then she reached the heart and her gauntlet punched into the guts of the flaming machinery.

Her hand drew back, already shimmering with light. Any decontamination equipment that dealt out this level of heat had to have the systems necessary to operate in those same conditions. Now Samus' suit was eating its fill.

New words flashed in her visor. "Varia system restored"

Suit energy stores dropped again, but now for a happier reason. Finally provided with the raw ingredients, bits of Samus' armor began to glow and rearrange. Her flaring shoulder pauldrons expanded, creating a housing for the new systems being assembled. Samus planted her back against the wall panel to keep it from closing as she smashed her weapon into the machinery again and again, shattering the innards into pieces small enough for the gun barrel to draw in as raw material.

Her shield levels stabilized, fortunately just shy of allowing her flesh to cook off her bones. The room took exception to this, causing more panels to draw back and deploy large mechanical arms tipped with flamethrowers. They undulated like hungry dragons, bathing the stone around Samus with an unending blast of fire until the metamorphic rocks lost their sheen when even crystals formed deep in the planet's began to soften. The somehow, the flamethrowers made a musical roar like battling orchestras.

Sometimes you had to love the Chozo.

One fight later, a severed mechanical arm proved to be an adequate way to pry open the far security door, so Samus left it wedged in place as she squeezed through the gap, leaving behind a floating holographic message cheerfully thanking her for her patience with decontamination procedures. Now inside the temple proper, the rooms became more functional, at least by Chozo standards. Branching hallways led off into the gloom towards what looked like ancient scientific chambers, but Samus continued to follow the main thoroughfare. She was willing to guess that whatever the Last was heading towards would be in a more important location.

A few moldering power cells gave up their charge to fuel the suit but other than that the walk was quiet. Then Samus stepped through an archway and found herself at an intersection with a massive cavernous hallway whose ceiling vanished up into the blue tinted gloom. Every foot of those seemingly infinite walls was filled with carved alcoves, each housing the life-sized shape of a Chozo frozen forever in sculpted time. Samus walked forward and ten thousand artificial eyes looked down at her.

These were simple stone carvings, not the animate guardian statues like the one Ridley had slain outside, but Samus still moved cautiously. As she took a few more steps into the chasm it became clear that there were spaces in the alcoves behind each statue, a gap large enough for a humanoid to hide. There were thousands of those hiding places on each wall.

The Last's troop of pirate cultists had been in the temple for hours. Samus sighed as she realized this hall was a sniper-alley good enough to inspire a religion. Well, the fact that she was not shot already suggested they had not reached here yet. Fifty yards to her right the floor rose up twenty feet to a new shelf while in the opposite direction it sank to the same degree, the high ceiling unchanged. This whole chamber was like a staircase for giants, between walls of the unmoving watchers.

Suit scan did not pick up any life signs hidden in the innumerable nooks, but Samus had learned not to trust that decades ago. She advanced into the hall with weapon raised, edging around to inspect the alcove behind the nearest statue. Then she lowered her arm as she realized there actually was someone there. A pile of chozo bones lay carefully stacked in their place of rest.

This was a crypt.

For a long moment Samus stood there in silence. The bones were lined with faint patterns in crystal and metal, a spiderweb lattice, the remaining evidence of the augmentations that had served their owner when she lived. Samus supposed her own bones must look like that now, though she doubted there would be anyone to stack them neatly when she fell. She could see enough of her future to guess that.

She stepped back into the chasm hallway and faced the statue as suit scan returned a name from the inscription.

"Kektothiocin Sound Weaver"

Then it returned another and another.

"Atrotiack of a Valliant Heart. Thutriakinial Deep Delver. Zachojin the Spire of Stars, Duzotak Well-feathered Rearer, Tuilonatin..." on and on as names filled Samus' eyes in an endless stream. It was blinding, these waiting dead.

For they were waiting. The stepped floor of this hall was not empty, but was scatted with the tool stations of a craftsman's workshop rising out the grooved metal patterns tranced in the floor. The stations were simple but not crude, the tools of a craftsman who worked in artisanal superconductors and hand-forged uranium. Samus traces the fingers of her gauntlet across the edge of one station. It was still set for easy start up, as if the owners had simply walked away for an evening. Around her the silence of the shadows grew louder.

Then she walked towards the edge of the platform where the floor dropped to its next great shelf and she saw one bench down there that still had a product sitting on it, unfinished. It was a dark metal hand, long fingered and sharp. From its wrist glittering bones emerged. Samus recognized that sheath, ones like it had alternately saved her or tried to kill her. This was a holy location, this place made guardian statues.

Hidden to the side was another inscription, dedicating this chamber. "We who are dead gift our flesh to the Boneshapers. Though absent, we strike forth to defend our pasts against all yet to come. Those who disturb this rest shall know our wrath, unfettered and raw."

A soft sound echoed through the hall. It was the muffled patter of footsteps. Then suit scan picked up life energy readings, far down the descending crypt stairs. There were a lot of them, and this deep into the temple Samus was willing to guess that it had to be The Last's Pirate worshipers. Ridley's forces would not have had the time to move so far, and the metroids didn't have feet. Samus moved towards the signatures, armor barely making a sound against the stone.

A Chozo voice drifted up from far below. "Idiots, I ordered you not to touch anything."

An answer in Utgardian came from a Pirate voice, absurdly apologetic.

The Last was not impressed. "No you useless thing, stand up and stop bowing! What? No, don't cut off your hand, how did your pitiful species ever survive to achieve space travel?"

It seemed The Last had upgraded the language translation systems of his followers, although it was probably more for his own convenience than out of a desire to share knowledge. It was reassuring that the cult of chozo-worshipers unsettled The Last as much as they had Samus. In her line of work it was easy to lose track of what sanity was supposed to be. On the other hand, the Last was a scientist who had been imprisoned as a dangerous criminal and so was perhaps not the best baseline to judge from.

Samus silently jumped down to the next level, an area filled with statue limbs and made her way over to look down from where this floor dropped down to the next step of the tomb-stairs. The Last's forces were still further down, probably on two levels away, but it seemed they were getting closer. Samus noted the half constructed statues covering that next stage of the Boneshapers' workshop and quietly moved to get in position for a new plan.

Two Pirate soldiers peaked up over the edge of that level in unison, beam weapons trained as they clung to the wall beneath them. They saw nothing, and so clicked their report as they jumped up and got into formation with their weapons trained outwards. More Pirates followed, forming up into a v-shape as they glared at the statue alcoves with intense suspicion. Then The Last rose up on the side of the platform, being the only one to have actually used the narrow stone staircase carved into the step wall for that purpose. His long robes trailed against the floor.

More sounds from below indicated that a large squad of Pirates was following behind but the honor guard advanced ahead of their commander, god, or prophet. They looked at a half-finished Chozo guardian statue that stood in the center of the space with visible relief at its missing head and shoulders. Across the galaxy, many species had learned the power of guardian statues in decidedly practical demonstrations. Even incomplete, the Pirates seemed unsettled by the pale organic bones that protruded from the places were the statue metal had not been added. They followed a new leader, but these soldiers still feared the wrath of the Chozo.

Then the lead-most took one more step and saw what had been standing in the perfect silhouette behind that incomplete statue. Samus' shot took him in the mouth from three feet away.

The Hall of the Boneshapers exploded into chaos and actual explosions. The Pirate soldiers tried to form up but Samus was already among them. The Pirates' lack of empathy now worked to her advantage as they did not instinctively lay off their triggers and the crossfire wore down at their own sides' armor. She ignored most of them and darted towards her actual target, but The Last reacted instantly and flung himself backwards into the void he had just climbed up.

Samus gritted her teeth as she followed with her own leap and met the expected hail of blaster-fire from rising below. She landed with a crash, maneuvering jets guiding her right onto the head of a Pirate trying to duck behind a craft station. Its carapace cracked with a crunch.

Samus queued up an open channel and began to speak in Chozo, "You interrupted our last conversation."

Blasters and missiles rained down on her position. From behind behind the firing line came The Last's voice, not even slightly out of breath. "You should be dead, experiencing the life energy field at such close range. Your biology has been modified more than these fool's files suggested."

Samus leaned out of cover and fired off a missile but The Last had changed trajectory the instant he finished talking, ducking among the Pirates to mask his life signature. Samus raced over to a statue alcove in the wall for new cover.

The Last continued to calmly analyze the situation, "You entered through the tertiary entrance, despite the active security and the Utgardians' own efforts. According to their coded transmissions, Commander Ridley advanced towards that location, so you either killed him or allied with him. Given the data on your history, killing is most probable. Such a rage filled thing you are."

He was trying to force her into the thoughts he desired. It was a battle of words in the middle of the Path. However, two could play at that game and by now she had a chance to analyze the data she had been given. Samus never liked talking in a fight but sometimes it was necessary.

She fired a blaster volley as she said, "You were imprisoned in the late days of the empire. Put away until a time where your crime would no longer be dangerous. Now you are trying to assemble the image of a galaxy one thousand years later from scraps of information. You led the Pirates back here to your former work site, desperate for any familiarity. I can still help you."

"You are a worm that thinks it can see."

That gave Samus the triangulation she needed, charged beam shot hit the last known location dead on. That took a Pirate soldier in the chest as the Last danced away in a blur.

The Last moved faster than even the armored Pirates. Samus narrowed her eyes. Suit scan bit through him easily, showing a full set of Late Imperial enhancements. Even Old Bird had not been outfitted with many of those features, and those he held had been set in a tired and time-worn frame. The Last was in his prime and hailed from another era, one where the Chozo had exulted in expressions of their unquestionable superiority.

But Samus wore a battle-suit. She sprang forth again and continued to unleash hell.

She said, "I will discard your attempt to kill me if you pause in your race for this temple's secret.

The Last hissed, "You do not know what this place is for."

Samus slid to the side, skidding in a spin as she fired with expert precision. "Enlighten me."

The Last took a single smooth step and a Pirate received the blast meant for his chest. "Ah, so you have suspicions. You believe this was the last planet inhabited by my people before they vanished from the knowledge of this galactic population. You think this place holds the answer: why."

Three missiles cut off his paths so he was forced to leap up a considerable hight and bound off a bit of projecting stone to land in the shelter of a statue alcove. An energy shot scorched the wall and the edge of his vanishing robe as he ducked behind the statue.

His voice continued, "But these creatures with me have suspicions as well. They tell me a story. A story of how a glorious people became pitiful hermits and then retreated entirely. The story says they turned into light."

Samus turned her attention to taking down two Pirate soldiers, but still noticed as a long fingered hand snaked out from behind the statue to grab and yank back a passing Pirate. The Pirate's look of rapture at this touch was short lived, to judge by the screams and crunching squelches that came from that alcove. Samus finished plastering her current opponent across the floor and turned to dash towards the Last just as a small jury rigged mechanism skidded out from the alcove, trailing green ichor across the floor. Pirates cybernetically integrated so much of their equipment, parts extraction could be messy.

The device began to hum as Samus spun around, shooting out a grapple beam to yank herself away faster. The device's hum reached a crescendo and a sparking energy field surged out, sweeping past Pirates who suddenly felt their cybernetic implants twitch and seize uncontrollably. Samus swept around a corner and only caught the edge of the blast but she still felt the suit struggle, disrupted somehow at the hardware level.

The Last's voice came again, but now from ten different directions. By now his breath was coming heavily, one step shy of panting. "They have stories about you as well. The lone pretender to the Chozo throne. No wonder such low things saw a god."

He had set every Pirate's implants to broadcast as relay speakers, hiding his true location. They were living speakers, though the vibration to their carapaces had to be uncomfortable. That meant slower reflexes and in one particular example, a charged beam shot delivered through his armpit joint. Samus straightened up in her latest alcove and scanned the battlefield.

She said, "They saw a punishment. There is a difference."

"Indeed there is."

Samus dashed across the open space, glancing for clues. Energy beams burned against her shields as she slid into cover, even as her suppressing fire hit back. Pirate soldiers were sill dangerous, and nothing to completely ignore.

The Last liked to talk. Those kinds of adversaries were always nice. Left in silence, he instead said, "Gods. Justice. Different stages of civilization articulating the same primitive sensation of guilt. But beyond that superstition, there is only cause and effect. There is discovery and exploitation. And here I shall at last feast on the fruits of my discovery."

Samus let her disappointment show. "A looter, like all the others."

Now there was true anger in his voice, "I steal nothing. The treasure this planet holds is fungible; receiving my reward does not lessen that of those hypocrites who built it on my back. After all, they are the ones who left you. I only seek to follow them to apotheosis."

Samus' breath froze. Apotheosis. Ascension to a new level of being. That was secret exit of the Chozo, the reason for their disappearance. That was the temple's secret.

That was what the message had said. "The door is still open."

...