Suits of Iron
By: Scott Adams
Introduction: Threats in the Dark
Darkness. The empty void that spawned all of life. All of existance. I can feel it's cold touch all around me. I am awakened, awakened from a sleep that lasted all too long. And I hunger. It is a hunger that only me and my children know. We hunger for energy. The energy of life, that which has spawned from the darkness and banishes it.
"And you shall have it." The voice is mechanical, and it comes to me from somewhere in the darkness.
Yes. I hunger.
"Patience. You shall have your energy when the time comes. Then you may feast upon precious energy, including the energy of the one that defeated you."
The one who defeated me, how I hunger for its energy. The one who wears a suit of iron.
* * *
The small red light flashed on and off, emitting a slight beeping sound in the dimly lit cockpit. The sound, small as it was, got the attention of the pilot, Samus Aran, famed bounty hunter. She shifted in her red and gold power armor, waking from a nap, as she looked at the light flashing on the control panel.
Proximity light, she thought, I must be nearing my destination.
She sat upright in her seat, and flipped on a few switches, and a holographic display map of the local sector appeared on her consul. One part was highlighted with a red square and the text, Gemini II, the space station where she was headed. Samus looked out of the cockpit window and stared out at the stars that dotted her view. Emptiness. The stars lay scattered and serene upon the pitch backdrop. Nestled among the points of light was a small metallic spec. Gemini II.
The bounty hunter punched in a few controls, and the ship lurched suddenly as it was taken out of auto pilot. Samus took the steering controls.
Haven't flown manual in a while. The thought drifted to her. A smile touched her lips. It'll be fun.
She sped up the ship and flew it straight to the space station. It was a sphere flattened on the top and the bottom, two spires jutting out from the flats. The station rolled lazily in the darkness. The sensors remained quiet.
At least they aren't scanning me….
As she neared the station, she found it strangely quiet. No defense batteries operative, no fighters or other ships, no communications. Not that she minded, but it just seemed too eerily quiet was all. She flew to an abandoned landing pad and set her ship down. She went to switching off all of the controls except for the defense mechanisms and made her way to the entry hatch.
The hatch opened upwards to the tranquil quiet of space. Her breath caught at the sight of the stars above her.
They always do that, ever since I was young.
She calmed her breathing, the filtered air drying her eyes and nose slightly. She pressed a few buttons on the cannon on her left arm, switching the cannon to a spazer beam. It's spread will make it easy to take out multiple targets. Samus then strolled calmly up to the closed door of the station. She reached out to touch it, and to her surprise, it opened for her. Instinctively, she held her gun arm out, ready to blast whatever came out. The door remained quiet in the darkness. She relaxed only slightly.
If they want to ambush me, they're even dumber than I thought. She thought with a sadistic grin.
She walked into the darkness, and the door shut behind her soundlessly. A sharp hiss went through the room as the room was pressurized. The smooth metallic door in front of her then slid upwards with a slight hissing sound. She walked cautiously into the darkened corridors. Her hand reached up to her helmet and brushed the switch to her night vision. A greenish tinge stained the corridors and lit them up bright as day.
Samus continued slowly, every small sound echoing through the corridors. The sound of metal crashing on metal, the station settling in the bowels of space, or even what sounded to be boots thudding in the station's metal corridors. She pressed on, and heard the sound of what were defiantly footfalls behind her and the familiar cocking of a gun from behind.
She whirled around on the pivot of her foot and saw a soldier in light armor colored a dull gray standing before her. His eyes were intent from behind his clear visor and a blaster rifle was held in his hands.
"Stop!" The soldier commanded.
"You don't want to do that," Samus said dryly as she leveled her gun arm to him. The soldier stood his ground.
He growled something and fired at her. The shot fizzled harmlessly off of her armor, the soldier's eyes going wide at this.
"I told you that you didn't want to do that," Samus said again as she fired her gun, the spazer beam spreading in three directions. All hit that soldier and he crumpled lifeless on the floor. Samus stared at him and shook her head. "Some people never listen."
The corridors got progressively lighter the deeper she moved into the station. She switched off the night vision as she wandered around maze like corridors marked with the name and logo of the Gemini II, two stars overlapping eachother. She made her way through the abandoned corridors. Eventually she made her way to the double doors marked main cargo bay. She went up to their controls to open the door, but found them locked.
Figures. Guess I'll have to do this the hard way.
She switched her gun arm to her missile launcher, aimed, and fired at the double doors, blasting them to a crumpled mess of twisted metal, and calmly walked through them, switching back to the spazer. A group of people stared at her as she walked in, each dressed in the same armor as the other guard, and each holding a weapon. Some, unlike the blaster rifle, that could actually punch through her armor.
"Oh boy," she breathed as she jumped gracefully out of the way of the first volley, firing multiple shots of the spazer beam. The beam spread throughout the room, each shot hitting multiple targets. She kicked on her space jump, and did somersaults in the air firing downward upon the hapless guards. After a few short second of fighting, the room was quiet. Samus landed with cat-like finesse in a crouch. As stood up, she looked around, and all the guards in the room were down. Dead, injured. She really didn't care at this point. There was just one thing she needed to know. The bounty hunter strolled calmly among the bodies, looking for one still intact enough to speak. A few gasped pleas brought her to her target, a heavy set man crumple on the floor, a large scorch mark burned into his gut.
"Get up," she commanded, lowering her gun arm towards him. The man looked wide eyed at her and got up slowly, a grimace of pain etched onto his face. "I'll let you live if you answer me one question. Can you do that?"
"Yes," the man gasped.
"Good. Now, where is your boss? Where is the terrorist know as Ultron?"
"He, he left the statio..o..n," the word was barely out of his mouth when Samus heard the sound of a laser being fired. It struck the man in the head, killing him instantly. Samus whirled around towards the source of the shot, gun arm ready. In front of her stood a large hulking metal form, glistening even in the dim station lighting. Its arms and legs thick as some station pylons, hands with claws on the ends, and laser cannons mounted on the wrists. One still smoked from the discharge.
It was the head, however, that ingrained itself into Samus's mind. It was an oval head, pointed at the top. A mouth twisted into a constant sneer, and eyes that burned red like the fires of a sun. She could feel the eyes, the cold, calculating eyes burning into her.
"Who, or what, are you," Samus said, her voice level.
"I am your destroyer, Samus Aran," It said in a mechanical voice. "I know that you have been searching me out. Searching for me because of what I did to those people. Because I of how I slaughtered and their inferior bodies."
"You……you are Ultron?" Samus asked. I thought he was human….
"You catch on quick, for a human."
"Why employ humans if you despise them so much?"
"They make for good cannon fodder. They are cattle to be herded, nothing more."
"Well, I think it's time to scrap your tin ass," Samus said as she fired a volley of shots at Ultron. They landed harmlessly on his metal exterior. His laugh grated on her nerves.
"You should know that adamantium is indestructible, bounty hunter!" Ultron said with his maniacal laugh.
"Adamantium?" Samus asked as she switched to her plasma beam without a thought. Ultron just looked at her and laughed. Samus let loose with the plasma beams those too, only leaving a mark on the insane robot.
"Enough," he said in an eerie calm. He fired at Samus with both of his arm cannons. She jumped cleanly out of their way, not taking a scratch. When she landed, she saw the lumbering metal form running through a doorway. Samus swore to herself, and switched to missiles. She chased after him, letting loose volley after volley of missiles, none seeming to slow the robot down.
"Blast!" She said as the station's emergency lights went on, the corridors flashing red.
"Five minutes to self destruct," a mechanical voice said.
"Couldn't try anything original, could you Ultron?" Samus muttered to herself. She made her way down through the corridors, kicking in the extra speed of her suit. She ran in a blue blur through the corridors, and reached the airlock. She blasted the doors open with missiles, not bothering with decompression, and keyed in the autopilot for her ship. An explosion rocked soundlessly behind her, pushing her to the ground. She quickly got on her feet and leaped onto the top of her ship and into the hatch.
The ship lurched upward as soon as Samus strapped herself in. Explosions rocked the ship as it lifted off of the landing pad, the station exploding below her. The viewscreen flashed a myriad of reds, yellows and oranges as the ship moved away from the exploding space station. Samus swore to herself the entire time.
I don't know where you came from Ultron, but I will hunt you down and destroy you. She looked out at the peace of the stars, pondering in the tranquillity.
Darkness. It engulfs me, but now I sense light in the darkness. Energy, living energy. You encountered it, didn't you?
"Yes, I did," The mechanical voice sounds… over confident. It is difficult prey.
"Soon, you will feast upon her energy." Yes. Soon.
Well, this ends the Introduction of Suits of Iron! What will happen to Samus Aran now? What is the danger that awaits her? And what the hell is Ultron doing here? Stay tuned for the first chapter of Suits of Iron!