Chapter 7: Behind The Veil
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Samus Aran felt herself slowly stir from whatever abyss she'd been sent to by Dark Samus's second cheap shot, one inadvertently enabled by Jacob's sudden arrival. There was a woman's voice, and for a spell she genuinely thought she was gently hearing Lusamine's dulcet tones urging her out of slumber... but opening her eyes dismissed that illusion to a, mild plummet in her mood. In the imagined place of Lusamine was one of the shrink-wrapped Federation medical staff, a woman, naturally, as per her temporary delusion.
She was barely paying attention to whatever the doctor was saying, right up until the point that she was oh so 'delicately' informed that her body was now SELF-GENERATING PHAZON. And the medic had the absolute GALL to talk about it like this was a good thing! She was called upon to test the PED unit the Federation had installed in her armor, and under the assumption she would not be released unless she did so she obliged. She felt sick, she felt violated, she wanted nothing more than to just rip the damn thing off her armor and be on her way... but she didn't have much of a choice now, did she? She would just have to live with this for now. She sleep-walked through receiving her orders from the ship's Aurora unit, allowing her suit to store the orders for later digestion in the familiar silence of her ship, away from the bone-headed Federation who thought using Phazon was a good idea.
After wandering through the halls of the Federation ship she returned to her ship and sealed it, removing her helmet after she sat in her pilot's chair to momentarily hold her head in her hands to try and process everything that had come at her over the last few minutes, not counting the pedantic dialogue... She was infected with phazon, the other three hunters were infected with phazon yet woke up before her and had since dropped out of communication and if the Federation were to be believed Jacob too had vanished. She didn't quite know how a nearly galaxy spanning organization like the Federation could lose track of someone so otherwise loud and destructive as Jacob, but they'd managed.
She let out a long sigh, reaching for and pressing the button on her ship's command console to initiate launch, opting to focus on 'work' for now and getting something done instead of sitting here agonizing over what she couldn't control. Who knew, perhaps while out and about on this mission she might find a cure for this corruption she was suffering...
Mild confusion forced her to utter a quiet invective. "... What? What the hell...?"
She knew without a shadow of a doubt she'd pressed the correct button, and yet her ship wasn't moving. There was no sound of engines spooling up, no sound of engine failure either, just silence. Baffled, she carefully took stock of her surroundings only to find the incredibly disquieting sight that it was everything that was functionally frozen. Her ship, the doors out in the bay, the lone Federation trooper in sight trapped in stasis mid-stride... What was going on?
From just behind her came the darkest, heaviest, most oppressive voice she had ever heard. "Eyes this way, child."
Nigh on petrified for, for her, the second time in as many days, she turned herself in her seat about as slowly as a heavily rusted door hinge, eyes as wide as they would go and a cold sweat on her brow. In normal situations, she understood that being afraid lent itself to a dramatic spike in blood pressure, heart rate, preparation for the body to fight or flight... She on the other hand felt like she was on the verge of death, her pulse felt throttled, her breathing was intensely labored, her eyes tunneled to hyper-focus on the source of this overwhelming pressure.
There was no other way to phrase it, a blacker than black, molten red-slitted eye no bigger than her morph-ball was lurking no more than a foot from her face. She expended a vast amount of effort to muster some show of defiance in lifting her arm cannon towards it, but her body outright refused to obey her mind.
The dark eye spun once along the horizontal axis, bobbing ever so slightly. "Calm your panic, wench, had I ill intent towards you we would not be speaking." Not even the slightest bit soothed by those words she remained frozen as the 'voice' carried on, the ruby red light pulsing faintly in time with the bass cadence of the words. "Consider it a privilege, were it not for Jacob's polite request and that fact that I quite favor the man I would not have stooped to the drudgery of 'courier."
The words were torture to draw from her throat, but she managed to speak them. "What, do you mean?"
The eye tilted slightly to the left, somehow displaying amusement. "I've a missive, spoken, Jacob bade me deliver unto you once you emerged from your coma. And the content of that message is, and I quote in his baser verbiage, 'I'm sorry, I got bored, so I did your job for you again, almost all of it. I'll contact you soon." The brief period where the voice was not speaking did not in any way lessen her immeasurable dread. "I suspect mere moments after I depart you will receive an abashed communique from your Federation masters, awkwardly requesting that you belay your previous orders. My favorite Jumper happens to have amusing timing such as that."
She swallowed a heavy lump in her throat, opting only to nod slowly to show her understanding. Perhaps it was craven to think, but if she simply stayed quiet and went along with it maybe this dark, painful presence would leave faster.
She was favored with a single return nod, before another string of powerful words. "Good. I've no doubt your mind is swimming with questions, but I shall deign to leave those answers to come from Jacob rather than continue to torment you by merely existing in the same space." There was a laugh, low, rumbling, and malevolent. "Observing you in his company is already amusing as it stands, I can't wait to witness a voluntary mute such as you attempting to articulate queries upon myself and my nature."
And not a single, strangled heartbeat after the last syllable was spoken the horrifying presence was gone. Reality returned to what it had been, the low, steady, electronic sounds of her ship's interior alongside the softer ambient sounds of the Federation ship she was currently docked within. She shivered, violently, as sensation and voluntary control returned to her limbs, the dreadful image all but burned into her mind regardless of the absence. Such was her state that when her ship's communicator beeped to draw her attention she actually both jumped and let out a feeble yelp at the sudden noise.
For once, not trusting her voice instead of choosing to remain quiet she falteringly reached out and accepted the comm, waiting for the voice on the other end to speak. "Ahem, ah, Miss Aran? Command, ah, Command requests you belay your previous orders. We've received information from that fourth Hunter. He informed us, and backed it up with data, that the other three Hunters are dead. He, also triangulated the origin point of the Leviathan seeds and the 'home world' of phazon. Command wants you to proceed to the rendezvous point and accompany the other Hunter through the wormhole we are told is waiting. Out."
She dropped the line as well, the now prophetic words of that... thing echoing in her mind.
Deep Space:
Jacob waited not-so-patiently in the relative silence of his ship, fingers tapping antsy-like on the flight controls while disembodied American metal blared through the interior and he sang along. "BROOOFORCE, kicking ass for justice and for Liberty, for Freedom and the Flag-"
Any other time, literally any other time barring this exact set of circumstances he'd be off and trying to amuse himself blowing up Federation property... somewhere, probably Norion for the salt-factor. BUT, until Samus woke up and got out here he had to at least pretend to respect the "partnership" with the Federation until they tried to stab him in the back.
He let out a long, aggravated sigh. "Being the good guy really sucks when it's like this, you gotta wait for them to do something before you can do something to them. At least in 40K you don't have to wait for Chaos, the Dark Eldar, or whoever, to do something. The atrocity list is already maxed out for all of them. And Nids are just free sport, period." He smirked. "Considering I've been one, I can say that for extra-sure."
He mentally stopped his 'soundtrack' and sighed again, kicking his feet up on the dash of his ship as he went back to waiting, waiting and being bored out of his mind. Which was weird considering he felt he'd done a good job padding his plunder-times for the planets Samus would have gone to, especially taking his time ravaging the Space Pirate home world. Frankly, he was rather sure the only step he could have gone further on that account was blowing the whole place up like Samus usually did. Problem being, he wasn't presently powerful enough personally to do that, and some gargantuan, planet-busting explosion hadn't materialized for him like it usually did for Samus.
He glibly commented to the silence. "No BSL station for me to crash into the planet... or Federation cruiser of comparable size." Jokingly, he added a further remark. "Sorry Drakon Prime, wrong place wrong time."
Horrible as it might be to joke about genociding a populated planet, he'd seen worse. That was 40K in a nutshell, actually. 'It'll always be worse.'
He commented again, more to just fill time than any serious question. "Wonder when I'll be heading back, and 'who' I'll be fighting alongside next." He thought for a brief moment. "Oh the Eldar would be horrible... It'd be all I could do to not just turn a gun on the arrogant snobs myself..." Another moment. "Always the Orks, they're always having fun, winning or losing." He smiled. "You know what, yeah, if I had to pick Orks would be my next 'choice' in regards to 40K if I were in the driver's seat of this adventure. Always a grand old time, derp turning into awesome, bigger and significantly louder guns..."
He started laughing, so amused with a myriad of hypothetical scenarios flashing through his brain that he almost missed the notification on his dash that told him there was another ship drawing towards him. Once he did notice, his mood soared as given the particular color scheme there wasn't really much doubt about who his new guest on the edge of nowhere happened to be.
He slapped the 'hail' button on his radio hard enough for the surrounding metal to ring. "Sam- Samus, so glad you could make it all the way out here! Come on aboard, mi casa, su casa."
Not caring in the slightest, he smacked the 'open hatch' panel on the side wall of his ship and stepped into the resulting void to bodily wave down Samus's gunship as his helmet formed around his head. His suit was permanently pressurized now because 'Metroid tech,' with limitless air. Why not abuse it for fun?
Samus's ship pulled up alongside his, lining up and extending a hard umbilical for foot traffic that he mildly corrected by hand before stepping back into his ship to allow Samus clear passage, relishing the satisfactory 'hiss' as his vessel re-pressurized. Seeing the famous bounty hunter in the void-spanning hallway, he deconstructed his helmet to greet the woman properly with a broad grin. To his mild surprise, Samus was electing to leave her helmet off as well, her armored boots carrying her through the umbilical at a crisp, martial pace that struck a harsh contrast to the disturbed slash nervous expression she wore on her face, among other things.
Boldly yet gently, he brought his left hand up to Samus's chin and tilted her head to his left, letting out an auditory hiss as his eyes fell upon the visible phazon corruption webbing out from her eye. She did not resist the contact. "Tsk, that is not a good look for you Samus. Don't worry about it though, one detonated planet away from fixing that right up." He let go and gestured to the single passenger seat that his vessel had, one with a view out the extremely narrow forward viewport. "Have a seat, get comfy. I have no idea how wormholes work but heading though in one ship is better I think, less chance for some space-related muckery to happen." He took his seat right away, detaching his ship from Samus's gunship and throttling ahead towards the wormhole. "Also, ah, heh heh, sorry about doing your job again? You were in a coma for quite a while." As an afterthought, considering that their deaths had been about as much of an exertion for him. "Oh, and, yeah, the other Hunters, dead dead. Phazon madness, nothing to be done for them, I think. Don't let that bother you."
Silence fell for a very long moment inside his ship as he ran out of things to chatter about right off without sliding into small-talk that he was pretty sure Samus would have no answer to. Flying straight to the wormhole from her coma didn't leave much 'so what have you been up to' chatting to be had, and certainly there was no 'weather' to yammer about with the both of them being in space for a long time. Not that he figured her for the small-talk type anyway, growing up as she did… Which did make him wonder. If he had arrived early, gotten his head straight early, murdered the hell out of Ridly early… What kind of woman would Samus have grown up to be? He didn't know if Samus's exceedingly good looks were partially due to the Chozo-DNA or just natural, but assuming the latter she could have easily become a model, given a 'normal' upbringing…
At such a low hesitant volume he almost missed it, his ship guest spoke, but he didn't hear the words. "What's that Samus?"
He took his eyes off the streaming star-space of the wormhole to look at the bounty hunter, still looking deeply disturbed and struggling to look directly at him. "…So… Him?"
The insinuation clicked in his head right off. "Oh! The Eyeball, yeah, he's my boss, more or less. Swell guy, pretty chill. You know, for the God of Evil." Glancing to the fore and then back he found Samus giving him a wide-eyed, mortified stare. "I know, I know, sounds horrible. But makes sense a bit, yeah? I'm just going out on a limb and guessing that half the reason you look so shaken up is he paid you a visit to deliver my message?" At Samus's mute nod he carried on. "Yeah, makes sense. He's only put in personal appearances a few times while sending me around the omniverse, but your experience is pretty much how everyone else feels around him."
After another long moment, one which he elected to wait through, Samus hesitantly spoke again. "What, what IS he?"
He rather openly shrugged. "Honestly, beats me too. We've had plenty of words since he plucked me from the grave to venture across time and space and I still don't know. I mean, he talks like a really proper human being and some of the things he's said, or just the way he's said things, makes me think he's just really, really old and really, really powerful, but still loosely human, at least." Realizing he'd dropped yet another bomb on Samus's probable perception of him, he piped back up to clarify. "Oh and, yeah, I'm here because I died. Froze to death on the side of the road in the middle of winter after my car broke down. 'Eyeball' says he liked my moxie trying to walk back to town despite the danger instead of just freezing to death in my car." He casually checked the rough countdown till they were through with the wormhole before continuing. "Knowing him, and assuming he is human-ish, he's probably watching the both of us with a crooked smirk on his face. I don't know, I just kind of imagine that's his default state. I am adventuring primarily for his amusement, after all." He paused to let slip a small 'heh.' "Well, him and whoever he decides to loan me off too. The 'guy' who built the universe where I met Silica and those girls, absolutely not on the same level of 'propriety' and 'decorum.' Much more, how do I say, lewd."
He debated for a few seconds the idea of toggling one of those 'lewd' Perks he'd acquired 'On' just as a way of reinforcing his point… but he opted to not. Sure it would be pretty funny and, obviously pretty hot to see Samus make a deeply aroused face after just a glance from him, but, one of his childhood crushes deserved better than 'courtship via horni.'
The wormhole dropped his ship back into real-space, and he threw his hands up in celebration at the sight of the electric blue, swirling ball that was Phazae. "And we're here! Aces!" He turned to Samus, leaning on the dash with his left elbow. "You ready to get that Phazon out of your system?"
Not responding for a moment, indeed not even looking at him, Samus spoke two short words. "… I'm sorry."
Genuinely taken aback, primarily because he thought he was the one who had the most apologizing to do, he tilted his head to the right before responding. "You're sorry? Sorry for what?"
Looking quite sad, which tugged hard on his heartstrings, Samus struggled to articulate the words. "I was, cold, to you on Aether. And, you didn't deserve that. I thought, at that moment, that you were expressing gratitude about, my, deeds instead of… instead of me. It… I thought…"
He interrupted, more to save Samus from dragging the words out. "Oh it was absolutely about you, no question. I'm invested in you being happy. That's pretty much my primary goal in this entire galaxy."
The bounty hunter's face gradually lost its 'sad' look and drifted back to a more stoic, normal expression. But the eyes, her gorgeous blue eyes had a gleam in them that he could only describe as gratitude, deep, deep gratitude.
He stood up, offering a confident grin before summoning his helmet and nudging his ship forward towards Phazae. "Now, let's go fuck up Dark Samus's entire day, eh?" He racked the slide on his bolter for nothing more than dramatic effect. "Let's make You happy."
Author's Note: Please bear in mind this is by necessity a hobby for me and do not beg for updates. My situation has adjusted that I am more able to write, but my Fanfics are still low on the Priority pole.