Chapter 2: ALT-F4
The pod fell from the sky as a comet of fire. It slowed down, shedding its coat of flame, and landed without a bump.
"Even with the thrusters destroyed, I made a perfect landing," Ned said proudly. He stood up, and a loud cracking noise was heard beneath them.
"If the landing was perfect, why did you land on the edge of a cliff?"
The thin ledge of rock snapped off, taking the pod with it.
"Idiot," Ted grumbled afterward. He hauled himself and his suitcase out of the smoking wreckage before he bothered to help Ned.
"Silence. It was a miscalculation."
Falling from the cliff was, ironically, fortunate: a dome-shaped structure sat on the valley floor, one of the entrances to the Research Lab. They were walking toward it when another noise was heard, this time the faint roar of engines from above.
"It is the gunship of the bounty hunter!" Ned exclaimed.
"Yes, yes. We must find cover."
They hid behind a natural arch of rock and peered around it. The orange gunship descended, its exhaust creating huge dust clouds. The whine of its engines ceased (it hovered above the ground, like her first gunship), and Samus Aran ascended from it.
"She is no longer clad in metal. What is that?"
The power suit resembled a second skin. It was orange, with oval patches of yellow.
"Did you not study the report our spies on BSL made? Her power suit was changed after being attacked by an X parasite."
Samus somersaulted from her ship. She went toward the still-smoking wreckage of the escape pod. She stood there, staring at it with her Scan visor. She turned her penetrating gaze toward the landscape, scanning for something, anything, that would explain the fresh crash site. Nothing.
"She has not seen us," confirmed Ned, back pressed against the rocky arch. He had procured a portable radar device from the pod. It would scan for any moving objects within a hundred-metre radius. Samus was walking toward the entrance to the Research Lab.
"Wait until she is inside. Then we follow. The radar will show us where she us at all times."
Samus shot the door open.
"Data entry," Ned spoke into his arm cannon, which doubled as an onboard computer, "Samus Aran possesses a wide-range Ice Beam. How she has acquired this ability is unknown."
"We know that she has an Ice Beam, the Chozos gave it to her," grumbled Ted.
"Did you not read the spy report? She was injected with a Metroid vaccine that… oh, never mind. You are too ignorant for your own good. Follow me."
***
The Space Pirate spies on the BSL had lived long enough to report that Samus sported a new power suit. They had hacked into the BSL archives, and learned about her X parasite infection and re-constructive surgery. They also discovered that her new cell structure, laced with Metroid DNA, would not tolerate an Ice Beam. Shortly after reporting that, the SA-X discovered them. X parasites took care of their other colleagues who had snuck aboard BSL.
What Ned had not figured out yet was that Samus had absorbed an SA-X. This had replenished all of her powers from her old suit, including the Grappling Beam, X-Ray, Thermal and Scan visors. Her suit was a fusion of Metroid and X parasite DNA. Samus Aran was a scientific impossibility.
"Where'd she go?"
"Here."
The aboveground entrance had led to a descending elevator, which led to a labyrinth of corridors. The radar blipped her position every now and then, so that Ned and Ted could trail her. So far, they followed at a safe distance.
"Faster. It makes no sense that we follow without observing."
"But our mission is no longer of importance! HYMY-734 was obliterated a few minutes ago. We felt the explosion and saw an asteroid that was thrown by it."
"Ted, you do not think ahead. There are hundreds of soldiers in this lab. After they destroy Samus, we will be transported to the nearest outpost on one of their ships."
"Oh. Well, let us get closer. Remember, I am not your decoy. The Captain is dead so his orders are null and void."
The next door swished open. They were on the staircase above a laboratory. The room contained five softly glowing glass pillars that extended from floor to ceiling. Control panels and computer screens were everywhere.
"Alpha Metroids, ten per container!" Ned whispered in awed fear. He had only seen them before in data logs. Translucent, globular, gelatinous body containing three red-purple nuclei, and four curved claws for latching onto prey… they were the deadliest creatures in the galaxy.
"Look! There she is."
Samus had her hand pressed onto one of the glass pillars. The Metroids took an interest in her. They bounced gently against their transparent prison, emitting low gurgling sounds.
"She stares at them."
"Look at how the Metroids react. It's as if they… recognize her."
They were crouched behind a console to observe her.
"Data log entry… Samus Aran has an affiliation with Metroids that is not fully understood. Perhaps the Metroid DNA injected into her bloodstream has given her an understanding of these creatures."
"Foolishness," Ted muttered. "She hates and fears them, she is the main reason for their near-extinction. She has pursued them across the galaxy."
"You do not… oh, what is the use. You are stupid, you have no insight into their…"
"Stop insulting me you fool!"
Ned received an elbow to his shoulder. He retaliated by using the flat end of his scythe on Ted's head.
"Argh!"
Samus whirled around. The Metroids became restless.
"You stupid idiot! She's heard us!"
"You started it!"
"Damn! She's walking this way!"
Samus was looking up at the console they were hiding behind. Her visors told her nothing, but she had definitely heard the grunt of a Space Pirate a few seconds ago. Her foot rested on the first step…
"Damn it! It's no use!"
Ted, shoving Ned aside, jumped upward and fired his Galvanic Accelerator Cannon. Samus was taken by surprise but used her arm cannon as a shield. She staggered backward.
"Die, bounty hunter!" Ted yelled, arm cannon ablaze. Samus took three direct blasts (which stunned her more than they damaged her) before taking action. She curled into the Morph Ball and rolled away, followed by the explosions of Ted's shots. She disappeared behind a pillar of Metroids.
"Stop firing you fool!" Ned yelled, and swatted Ted's arm away, "You'll break the containers you idiot!"
"She hides behind the same Metroids she helped to destroy. Come out, bounty hunter! Come out to die!"
Silence, save for irritated Metroid noises.
"You coward!" Ted shouted. Samus did not understand a word of it. She did, however, understand the art of battle. She dived to the left, rolling into a marksman's crouch. Before Ted even thought of reacting he was encased in ice. Ned stumbled backward and his claw rested on the console. He glanced down at it, and decided his fate.
Samus prepared to finish off the frozen Pirate with a missile, but the snapping sound from the five glass pillars distracted her.
The locks on all the pillars had been deactivated. The pillars began to rise…
"We die together, Samus Aran," Ned laughed. He heard her speak one word in the alien language of English. He was still rusty with his translation, but he was certain that Samus had just said, "Damn."
"Damn, indeed. Metroids will be your death!"
Fifty gleeful Metroids cried out in unison. Freedom! There is food here! Get the food! The Metroids swarmed around the two of them (Ted was lucky to be frozen; Metroids do not eat frozen hosts). There were so many Metroids attached to Ned that he lost balance and fell off the walkway. He landed into even more hungry Metroids. He could feel their ravenous claws sinking into his exoskeleton, sucking out his life essence. He would join the Chozo in a few seconds.
There was a blast of light, the roar of an explosion. And pain, lots of pain as he was thrown up and away by the shockwave. Ted was thawed and struck by the explosion simultaneously. After hitting the wall and then the floor, they lay very still.
Samus came out of her Morph Ball. She did not bother to scan the two Pirates; the Metroids and the detonation of her Power Bomb had obviously killed them. She did, however, spend a few seconds in silence for the premature death of so many Metroids. They had all disintegrated; there were only molecular remains… Not wasting any more grief upon their deaths, she took the nearest passageway out of the room.
***
"What the hell happened?"
"The bounty hunter destroyed the Metroid holding facility. She is heading toward this sector very slowly, she has become cautious."
The nerve centre was a massive star-shaped room, each of the five points leading to key areas of the research lab. At the centre of the star was the lab's mainframe, where two computer operatives monitored their quarry.
"She will be more dangerous now that…"
Two blips were onscreen.
"Who are those Space Pirates? They followed the bounty hunter until the holding facility was destroyed."
"There has been no word from HYMY-734."
"It does not matter. The power bomb has wounded them, perhaps fatally. They will not last long."
The operative lifted his head and shouted.
"The bounty hunter approaches."
One hundred mercenary Space Pirates re-checked their weaponry.
***
"Hey."
"What?"
"Are you alive?"
"No."
A very charred Ned stood over a slightly less charred Ted.
"Your suitcase is undamaged."
"Oh, good. Open it for me, I think my legs were burnt off."
Ned tapped the large suitcase with one of his toe claws, releasing the catch. Something black burst out of it, swatting Ned in the face before it flew off.
"Arghh! Another one of your blasted pets!"
PLAZMITE: Small insect capable of storing and releasing thermal energy. Plazmites are attracted to sources of heat, thriving on the energy present there. They emit light when hunting, and expel small bursts of thermal energy when threatened.
"It burnt my face! Your damn pet burnt my face!"
Ned leveled his arm cannon at the Plazmite, which was happily circling a small fire that had erupted from a broken gas pipe.
"Kill you," Ned growled. Ted tackled him and they both fell to the floor.
"I suppose your legs were not burnt off, then."
"Shut up. Do not harm my pet. Remember that we do not possess thermal goggles, it will help us in any darkened areas."
"Very well. Now get off of me before I really burn your legs off."
Ted retrieved his suitcase.
"I do not think that your pet will want to leave that flame," Ned observed. The Plazmite cooed and chattered as it flew in circles around the gas flame.
"You know nothing. Plazmites are very simple creatures."
Ted held the suitcase open toward the insect and pressed a small red button on the handle. The interior of the suitcase suddenly became white-hot. The Plazmite abandoned its gas fire in favour for the warmer suitcase, which Ted closed.
"I designed it myself."
"You are very unorthodox for a soldier."
"And you, studying a foreign language! Let us find our subject before she escapes us."
***
The corridor was well lit, the light glinting on Samus's visor. It was an endless tunnel of gray metal, sloping up and down sometimes, with doors set into its walls at regular intervals. She paused ever so often to investigate the rooms behind the doors, but all they held were workstations with various test subject organisms, some of them Space Pirates. Forsaking caution, she decided to use her Speed Booster. The end of the corridor must lead to somewhere more interesting.
***
"Damn it!"
"What?"
"Subject is out of radar range," Ned grumbled. The dot on the radar had been there one moment, gone the next.
"Now what do we do?"
They were running along the same corridor their quarry was in. The Plazmite in Ted's suitcase was scratching to get free.
"The map says there's a transport unit nearby."
"How convenient for those lazy scientists," muttered Ted, "They probably spent so much time standing in one place, they forgot how to walk."
"A poor attempt at humour, Ted."
"Shut up."
Ned screeched to a halt in front the transport room and they went inside.
"What is this thing?" Ted wondered. A large blue metallic dome, fifteen feet high and wide, dominated the room. A small control panel was built into it.
"You simpleton. It is a teleportation unit."
"You know how to use it?"
"Of course! Get in."
Ned manipulated the control panel and an opening appeared on the side of the dome. Ted went inside, it was cold as Space. Ned joined him seconds later, the doors closed to pure liquid blackness.
"Now what?"
"Patience, you fool."
Blinding white light from below. Ted looked down and saw that his torso and suitcase had disappeared.
"What…"
…And they were gone. When they could see again, bright flashes of light were all around them and they recognized the sound of gunfire, mixed with the cries of war and death from Space Pirates. Instinctively they dove to the ground, without time for Ted to check if his body was whole again. Ned looked around, and crawled on claws and knees to the nearest mercenary Pirate who was firing madly at something above and beyond the computer console Ned was crawling behind.
"Excuse me, but…"
"Die, Bounty Hunter!" the mercenary suddenly roared. He was an ice statue a nanosecond later.
"Well, that answers my question," Ned muttered. He crawled back to Ted.
"We're in the centre of the research lab. The subject is being assaulted by a great number of mercenaries."
"You state the obvious! I saw him being frozen…"
At the mention of now-frozen mercenary, the selfsame mercenary disintegrated when a Power Bomb was detonated. Again, Ned and Ted were flung against a wall, even though the computer console in front of them took the brunt of the blast.
"Blasted concussive weaponry," Ted was saying, "Giving me a concussion…"
Ned hid himself behind some wreckage to observe Samus.
"Data entry… subject possesses an ice diffusion missile which freezes objects within approximately ten yards of impact…"
Ned winced at what Samus did next.
"Subject possesses the ability named 'Screw Attack'."
"Horrible, isn't it?" Ted commented.
"Yes," Ned agreed. Samus was eliminating her enemies with cold calculation. By merely watching her, their circulatory fluid ran cold. Some she dispatched with a diffusion missile, some she hacked apart with the screw attack. Many more she destroyed with ice beams alone (one ice beam froze, the second one tore apart the atomic structure). There was no hesitation. There was no mercy. Ned and Ted were awed at her efficiency.
"It is best that we do not intervene," Ned decided.
"You coward," Ted sneered, and began to rise from their cover, "I will…"
Ned yanked him downward.
"Silence. Do you wish to be destroyed? There are twenty mercenaries remaining. They have spent their lifetimes doing battle, but they will not kill her."
"Are you supporting the Bounty Hunter?" Ted asked, incredulous that a Space Pirate would say such a thing.
"Watch," Ned replied.
Samus was out of sight; she had last been seen on the far eastern end of the room. Six mercenaries stood on the catwalks above Ned and Ted. The rest were on the ground floor, waiting. The silence was broken by rapidly approaching footsteps.
"Here she comes," the Rank C Soldiers thought. Even at the extreme velocity she was moving at, Samus flawlessly targeted the catwalk and the resulting diffusion missile literally froze the six mercenaries in their tracks. She sped past the hiding place of Ned and Ted (who had ducked lest she saw them) and, so great was her momentum, burst through a mercenary that stood in her path. His internal organs (internal no longer) splattered the ground. Samus slowed down, pausing behind a steel girder. Fourteen varying streams of gunfire battered the girder, twisting and warping it into a grotesque shape. There was a sharp crack as it gave way; the platform it supported crashed down, adding to the carnage of machinery in the room.
"She's disappeared again," Ted whispered, "How does she do that?"
Above where the six ice statues stood was an explosion. Frozen bits of Space Pirates showered the duo beneath. Samus leaped off the obliterated catwalk to utilize her Space Jump (that Ned duly noted). With great deliberation, she spun through midair and killed four of the fourteen with the screw attack. The combined barrage of gunfire from the other ten forced her to land, however (the screw attack could only withstand so much opposing force, Ned muttered into the recorder). The mercenaries and the duo waited.
"She has exhausted all of her attacking methods, I am sure," Ned whispered.
"Do you still believe that she can win?" Ted derided, "You are traitorous to even suggest…"
"Oh, I am sure," he affirmed, "If she defeated Kraid, Phantoom, Draygon and Ridley in a single mission, these mercenaries are nothing but cannon fodder for her."
Ned, to Ted's consternation, was proven correct within the next five seconds. Samus leaped twenty feet upward from her hiding place, was struck down by three sharpshooters, but fired a diffusion missile into their midst. Ned counted nine statues as Samus easily picked them off with ice beams before landing. The final mercenary was frozen from the arms downward, and judging from the howls, was in excruciating pain. Ned would later realize, the unfrozen blood could not circulate through cold, solid arteries. Ned and Ted made no move to assist as Samus calmly walked up to him. Delirious in his agony, he uttered a tirade of curses to his tormentor. Samus transformed her arm cannon, and, with both her hands, ripped his head off, taking a piece of the spinal cord with it. The blood cooled and congealed while it flowed down the frozen remains.
"She's strong," Ted remarked, swallowing the bile that had risen to his throat. Ned wanted to retch but held it back. Samus would hear, and he wanted to keep his head, his head was valuable to him. He heard English words being spoken.
"What? What the hell did she say?" Ted demanded.
"She said something about blood looking different on ice, I don't know," Ned groaned. Witnessing the savage dismemberment had taken its toll on his stomach. He realized that such a weakness would prevent him from being promoted in any way… what kind of soldier retched at the sight of blood?
"She's leaving."
Ned wanted to reply, "Good, the less we see of her the better!" but he had priorities. He rummaged through the frozen remains of some unfortunate warrior and took the ID plate that is welded onto the arm or scythe of each Space Pirate.
"This can be used to access escape pods. We must report to Central Command. They need the information we currently have, and whatever else we can learn. We have to follow."
"To our deaths?" Ted mocked.
"Very possibly."
Ned sounded as if they were dead already.