Chapter 7
Ice Caves of Mostok
In a bizarre twist of freakish craziness, two bounty hunters, a space pirate, an imposter, and three Galactic Federation officers stood at a standoff in the middle of an abandoned corridor at Galactic Federation Headquarters. Silence filled the corridor as everyone stood quietly, waiting for one or the other to make the first move.
"This isn't going to go anywhere fast", Lana thought to herself. The Houston impersonator was the first to make a move. In a wink of an eye, the impersonator rolled into a morph ball and dropped a power bomb. With its explosion, everyone was scattered throughout the hallway. Smoke poured through the tight corridor, and coughing could be heard throughout the passageway. Lasers started firing across the corridor and in an instance, the screaming of a space pirate indicated that the poor creature had been destroyed. The smell of rancid burning flesh invaded Lana's nostrils confirming the creature's death.
Out of the smoke, Samus grabbed Lana and began retreating down the corridor, leaving the fighting group to each their own.
......
"Okay. What the hell is your problem?" Lana asked the SA-X.
"I don't know what came over me. My mind just seemed to go blank."
"I'm trusting you with my life out there and you're going nuts on me!"
"I told you...I didn't know what came over me. I was having flashbacks and they seemed so lifelike. I was seeing a battle from my view as well as Samus' view, both at the same time", Samus said.
"I believe the SA-X had a lapse in memory, but what caused that lapse is the question. This could put our mission at a serious risk", Adam said.
"I felt a familiar presence on the station. The same feeling people get when they think they are being watch, except I felt it in my mind", Samus said.
"Regardless, you are a danger to this mission. If this was to happen again...one of us could get hurt", Lana said putting a hand on Samus' shoulder, "...and I don't want to see that happen." Lana turned back to Adam and typed some things into the console. A few moments passed by before a hologram showed up with a map of the galaxy. "According to GFP's radar, an unidentifiable, hunter-class gunship sped away from the station after the incident. The ship's path takes it out of this galaxy, and with its predicted path, past Atlass286. Adam. Set our course back along this path. Our only choice is to pursue."
"Yes Lana", Adam replied.
......
The planet of Mostok lay just in front of the bounty huntress' ship. "We are receiving a weak trace from the gunship, from this planet."
"What can you tell us about this planet...Mostok?" Lana asked.
"There isn't too much information about it. Mostly a rock planet with extreme low temperatures, the atmosphere is toxic with a continuous fall of snow-like precipitation. It is said that there was an ancient civilization ions ago, but to this day, there as been no trace of their existence. Then again, there has never been any active research done on the planet. Just some surface scans from the early years of exploration. There is very little creature life on the planets surface, but beneath it is unknown. The core is very unstable, and volcanic eruptions are frequent."
"Sounds like a nice vacation spot", Samus muttered.
"The signal is coming from an isolated mountain range valley. Due to the climate, I will have to drop you off in the valley and keep a safe orbit. The atmosphere could damage the engines intake thrusters."
The ship descended through the snow and hovered a few feet from the ground. A hatch on the underside of the ship opened and the two bounty hunters descended down the elevator. The snow crunched under the bounty hunters feet as they made there way out of the clearing. The engines began to get louder as the ship slightly struggled to gain altitude and before long, the light from the ships engines faded into the thickening clouds.
The surrounding trees were covered in the toxic snow and no leaves grew on the barren limbs. The bark on the trees was a dark brown, many with black scars running up the trunks. "Looks like this place suffered some type of fire", Lana commented, placing a hand on one tree to look at the ash. Lana stopped and looked around. "You know...this path looks like it was made." Lana looked down the path and back up toward the sky. "It looks like something fell from the sky a while back. Look over here", Lana said uncovering the stump of a broken tree.
"I wouldn't call it unusual. What do you make of it?"
"Well there isn't too much we can conclude about it, but it is an interesting fact that something would survive the atmospheric entry and still be this big upon landing."
Samus nodded her head and the two continued down the path. As they walked the landscape became a little rockier, and the barren trees became few and far between. Before long, Samus and Lana were walking into a very small valley. Low rocky cliffs rose up on either side of them before coming together in the middle. The ledges scattered along the cliff's walls were jagged and covered in snow wherever it could find ground to hold to. The entire valley was covered in cave entrances gaping like monstrous mouths with ice stalactites resembling teeth. From beneath their snowy graves, statues of an unknown civilization lay in ruins alongside the entrance to many of the caves.
"I guess our best bet would be to check out these caves with statues at their entrances", Samus said heading for the cave straight down the middle of their path. "Did Adam specify from where the signal was originating?"
"No. He only said that it was coming from this valley."
"The bad thing with these older gun ships is that their homing signals tend to bounce around when stuck in mountain ranges like this", Samus said. I would say that that signal is emanating from the cave ahead of us, only because some type of falling celestial object, as you said before, created this path. This being could have ran into trouble, and if that is the case, then the ship would automatically send out a distress signal."
"Ok, well then lets go have a look", Lana said as she took a closer look at one of the statues. The statue contained fox-like characteristics and wore a hooded robe, shadowing the expression on its face. Samus and Lana entered the cave cautiously. The sound of running water was barely audible as it lingered up from the caves depths. Small ponds of water littered the cave floor as stalactites from the ceiling dripped melted ice into the still ponds. A low blue green light emitted from some of the ice stalactites.
Samus tapped on one of the stalactites, "That's interesting. This creature was frozen to the stalactite. This creature emits a light from it and with it frozen; it acts like a light bulb as it reflects inside the ice. I wonder if this was an intentional act?" Samus asked as she pointed at various stalactites.
"It's a possibility", Lana replied kicking something up from under the snow. "Look at this", Lana said picking up the object. "Its metallic and...and it has some writing on it."
"What's it say?" Samus asked walking over.
"Hold on, it's covered in dirt", Lana said rubbing the dirt away, "I can only make out atic Feder from it. I assume this is Galactic Federation property, whatever it came off of." Lana swept away more of the snow from the ground and found some marks etched into the rock floor leading deeper into the cave. "It goes down this way."
Samus followed Lana further into the cave until they came upon a wildly flowing river. The sound of the rushing water would have been deafening if it weren't for the helmet's ability to amplify or decrease the extremities of sound. "The marks continue on the other side", Samus said pointing across the tumultuous waters. The two of them space jumped across the wild waters and continued following the marks.
"Lana?" Samus called out. Lana turned around and came back to the SA-X holder her head.
"What's wrong?"
"I have that feeling again." A worried look overcame Lana as she placed a hand on the SA-X's shoulder.
"I don't need you going crazy on me again. Are you going to be able to control yourself?" Lana asked.
"It's not exactly like when I was going after you. This feeling is a feeling of presence, but not in mind...but around us. Let go on."
The two continued on, Lana keeping a close eye on the SA-X. She wasn't fully confident that she could trust Samus with her condition as is. A humongous pile of rock soon confronted the two bounty hunters. "Well the marks go into that", Lana said, pointing out the obvious. "I guess we start clearing", Lana said while scanning the walls of the cave. "Don't fire any missiles though, the walls here are weak from the impact of whatever hit here."
The two began digging out small rocks followed by slightly larger rocks until mid-sized boulders were left. After an hour of hard labor, the two were able uncover the end of a metal box. The scuffed metal became more visible as the rocks were slowly removed. When all the rocks were removed, Lana took a step back to gander at the object they had just uncovered. Around eight feet long and three feet tall, the box had smashed into the cave wall at such incredible speed, the wall around it crumbled and even turned to dust in some areas. "Amazing! An object of this size should have been obliterated upon re-entry in the atmosphere", Lana said wiping away the dust and ash. A figure of a red bird with its wings spread wide was displayed upside down on the box. Galactic Federation was printed in bold blue letters against the gray background. The metal box had landed at an angle in the rocks, bottom-side up.
"Looks like a cargo box of some type", Lana said noticing some more writing, "H.A.2043.7493028", wonder what that is?"
"That's not a cargo box", Samus said taking a seat on a nearby boulder.
"What is it then?" Lana asked walking over to the SA-X and gazing back at the metallic box.
"It's a Galactic Federation Coffin", Samus said.