I don't own Metroid. I don't own Samus, I don't own Adam, I don't own everything but a few original characters, who, being products of my imagination, I do have control of.
PROLOGUE.
It was around 2030 by the official Galactic calendar that I received the call.
The official calendar was not the prominent one, of course. Nothing with "official" tagged on it was very commonly used. Much like how English was supposedly declared the "official" language of hundreds of star systems, yet each planet had its own dialect or subset language, the galaxy was riddled with numerous calendars with origins lying in ethnicity, religion, or historical causes. The official calendar was used mostly in the idle Inner Worlds, where delegates from across the galaxy came to squabble pointlessly about laws that were rarely enforced on ninety percent of the worlds humanity had colonized and were wholly unrecognized by other space-faring races, such as the Space Pirates. As an old friend of mine would put it, no one gave two craps over whether the Preservation of Submicroscopic Organisms law was approved by some bogus congressional body consisting of old idiots who couldn't tie their shoes without aid of a machine or android.
By the calendar of the Chozo, the one I had been raised with and come to know, which was oriented by the day the Great Prophet O-Seen'ia brought peace to the people and formed the Band of Races, it was around 51790, of the Second Age. By Space Pirate reckoning, it was likely 1872, or by the calendar of A.D., 16743. Regardless, to me, it was simply "that year". The year everything changed. The year that altered my course in career and life. I have often resented that year, and yet had that year never occurred I would no longer be here to write this. I, Samus Aran.
Some have considered me a legend. Hero? I doubt it. If my actions have ever been driven by morality, I cannot recall it. I work for money. Simple as that. If anyone should anyone think otherwise, I assure them any hints of nobility are not intended. I am not entirely amoral, but nor am I an ethicist by any stretch.
I had just cleaned up things on the devastated Zebes and at the time was in cryo-stasis on my ship. I had instructed the ship's AI to travel to the Wastes, a fifty-light-year emptiness devoid of any celestial objects, or anything at all, save for the occasional stray asteroid. At least, that was the commonly accepted belief. I knew better.
Situated near the dead center of these supposedly desolate Wastes was a single star, which I had decided to dub Eden. A large white dwarf, it was far too small to appear on distant Scanners, and apparently the human explorers had managed to overlook it. It was orbited by a single watery planet, habitable for human life without Environment Suits. Such worlds were a rarity, even an anomaly. Ironic, don't you think, that one of the few worlds hospitable for humans should be commonly deemed as nonexistent? Still, that did provide me one fortune: a safe haven, a retreat, a place to call home. The planet was littered with ancient ruins, built in a style remindful of the Chozo's, which brought back memories of my youth. For this reason and for its sheer beauty, I called the world Tree of Life. After my recent exploits, I felt it necessary to take a quick breather and was returning here.
I awoke in a Hibernation pod, one of many that lined the cylindrical wall of the Cryo-Chamber, with a light buzzing in my head. Such aches were common side-effects of long periods of time spent Frozen. Most modern cryo models had overcome this, as had mine. The fact that I did have an aching could mean one of two things. One, my pod was malfunctioning. Two, I had been awoken abruptly in response to either a transmission…or trouble- preferably the former. Trouble was the last thing I needed.
Even so, I'd learned over time to always assume trouble, and so I quickly climbed out of the pod, dressed myself, did a standard Medical check and hurried to the cockpit. No alarms were active- that was a relief. I settled in at a chair near the viewscreen and assumed control of the ship. A blue transparent sphere floated above the control panel- a hologram. Text in red zoomed through it center, accompanied by voicing.
"YOU HAVE RECEIVED 1 MESSAGE. WOULD YOU LIKE TO VIEW IT?" The computer spoke perfectly without any hint of emotion or identity. I had tried customizing it once, and the result had been awful. I preferred the generic AI program to a more characterized one—at least a generic AI didn't bicker constantly and criticize my every action.
"Origin, please," said Samus.
"PROCESSING…PROCESSING…SYSTEM: sol. PLANET: terra. MOON: luna. RECEIVED 4 STANDARD MINUTES AGO. APPARENT TIME OF SENDING: 1 STANDARD YEAR AGO. WOULD YOU LIKE TO VIEW IT?"
"…Yes, please." A year. For a message from Luna, that was…odd. Most messages would take decades to travel such a distance. It occurred to me that this would imply whoever had sent this had sent as a priority signal. Someone, somewhere, needed to tell me something urgently.
"AUDIO OR VISUAL?"
"…Visual."
The sphere morphed into a flat screen, on which materialized a face I immediately associated with that of Vice Admiral Adam Malkovich. When first I had met Adam, he had been a down-on-his-luck Navy career had taken a pitfall after the first Zebes invasion. As now it is well known, the mission had been a disaster for the Navy and had cost them a small armada. After such a costly defeat, the senior brass needed a scapegoat, and who better to blame than the one officer who had the bad luck of surviving? You'll never hear them talking about the blunders of Admiral Fitzgerald or the incompetence of Adm. Johansen because they're dead. I've seen the records—Adam (he wished for me to call him by his first name) was not the one at fault.
Adam spoke. "Samus Aran. It's been a while since we last spoke. You do remember me, don't you? I wish we could have talked under lighter circumstances—I still owe you for defending me before Zebes. However, the situation is urgent. I cannot inform you wholly of what has occurred until we- meaning High Command- are certain you are in no position to divulge what you have learned without permit." He grinned very, very slightly. "I can tell you only this- there is a reward, one-point-five mil, if you can pull off what we seek to ask of you. A message will be sent out to all registered bounty hunters soon- it took effort for me to send you a transmission in advance. I'm only allowed half a minute, so I have to hurry. They'll all be flocking to Earth imminently, so you would do well to hurry. And don't do me any favors this time. Adam Malkovich, signing off." The brief hologram vanished and the sphere rematerialized.
I stared at where the hologram had been without uttering a word. Then I said, promptly, "Computer, set a course for Luna."
