(Wow! I'm surprised I made it to 20 reviews, even past! So, I'll get writing. Updating might still be slow, due to a billion other things to do, but summer break helps a ton. Aaaand—the adventure continues!)

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VI: Denial

I'm inside the base. There had been no sign of Aran, but I'll keep an eye out for her. The space pirates suspect nothing—dull-witted creatures. When there's more to report, I'll do so. –Yeldir

YeldiR activated the 'send' command on his wrist-PC, the one the federation had given him to contact them. Then he turned around in the command room, ready to check up on one of his numerous experiments.

A bleep from one of the view screens in front of him made him turn back to look. Trust the space pirates to have done something stupid—and then come whining to him about it. Well, he wasn't their leader for nothing...

Sure enough, it was one of those twisted, sneering faces that stared at him from the screen. "Sir, there's been an explosion in the main generator room. We think a native organism may have tried to break in. A few electrical nodes have been damaged—nothing major."

YeldiR nodded his head impatiently. "Do whatever you need to do. Ask the 'commander' if the electricians can't figure out such high-level work...in fact, I'll send him down now." A perfect opportunity...

The pirate nodded, oblivious to the insult, and the screen shut off. Once more, yeldiR swiveled around to face a door in the back of the command room. "001," he called, "I need you to oversee the electricians figuring out a generator problem. They're in the main room—B5A."

A man's voice answered from an adjacent room. "All right. I'll see what I can do, sir." A few moments later, the speaker walked past yeldiR on his way to the generator room.

He was a human, very tall, wearing a nondescript white suit with a very high collar. His hair was naturally grey-brown, giving him the look of an older man. He had grey eyes that seemed focused a bit further than reality, and a slight frown creased his brow.

YeldiR smiled acidly. "Good."

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Samus opened her eyes. She hadn't been aware of passing out. Disoriented for a moment, she blinked and stared around, then memory flooded back. The snakeworm, the electricity, the pain... Suddenly realizing the vulnerability of her position, Samus stood up, slowly, and looked around. She felt just a slight ache in her muscles; the power suit had healed the worst of her injuries. The enemies' attacks didn't take energy directly from her tanks; it was healing her body that used the power.

Samus checked her suit's status, wincing a little when she saw that two full energy tanks had been drained. In proportion, that wasn't much, but two energy tanks could mean life or death when you were fighting hordes of merciless space pirates. Speaking of which... they would probably have noticed those broken generators by now.

She crept along the wall until she reached a portal, which winked, bluish, at the entrance to the room. No noise seemed to be coming from the outside—but it was always hard to tell with these types of things. Normally, Samus might've simply shot the thing and barged through, but this time she actually had to find something before blowing the station up.

Finally, she shot the portal, peered through, and slipped out into the corridor that was revealed. She surveyed her surroundings; then, at the warning symbol flashing across her visor, she rolled into morph ball and ducked behind a pipe across the hallway as a group of space pirates came clattering down the passage. She had just gotten out of the room in time—they turned into the entrance she had exited a few moments ago.

Samus's viewpoint from morph ball was limited because of her height, but something in the groups' attire didn't seem to fit in. It was as if there was another being in the center of the mob... Her gut twisted unpleasantly, but the thought was fleeting. She was being unreasonable.

When the last pirate had disappeared through the hatch, Samus cautiously uncurled and looked around. The group had come from the right of the portal—what would they have been doing before? They were probably fixing the generator...which meant they'd need tools...which meant there just MIGHT be a supply room somewhere in that general direction. If they'd gotten supplies first, that is; if not they may have come from some place where they could be commanded or contact a leader.

Probably, might, somewhere, if, or. Too many undecideds. But they had to have come from somewhere, Samus reasoned; it was as good a guess as any. She continued up the passageway from where the group had come.

It wove and twisted, probably because of natural boundaries. Doors opened up to the left and right; Samus kept exploring, going by her basic standby—you could always go back later. Space pirates were everywhere. Samus found herself looking longingly back at the days when she could kill any pirate she wanted, any she saw...but this was different. She must not be noticed.

She turned back from another dead end, checking her map for places she hadn't explored, and something caught her eye. It seemed she was just below the ventilation shaft she had noticed earlier. Making sure that no space pirates were around, Samus switched to her scan visor and panned the small room.

There. A small covered panel with a slight airflow. The covering was weak; a missile blow would shatter it. And it looked like the morph ball would fit in.

Samus tried hard not to remember her last experience in morph ball.

But in the end that was the deciding factor. If there was another way out of this dang place than the snakeworm hole, she was going to find it. The explosion might attract some pirates, so she would have to work fast. Samus fired a missile at the grate, rolled into morph ball, and once again found herself in a cramped, dark space. The dust and metal pieces from the explosion settled behind her as she bomb-jumped up the shaft, trying to find level ground.

She winced at every explosion, although she knew the pirates wouldn't be able to come up after her. They could still hear... Finally, a ledge ahead showed the end of the long shaft. Samus stayed still at the top and checked her map. The passage seemed to be heading straight for the opening.

She looked at her map again. Just a meter forward... then she was at the end, peering out into the soft darkness of Kelta-Z's night through the tiny grate. It was almost certainly as weak as the one she had come in through; space pirate constructions were uniform in that kind of way. That meant if she could bring herself to bomb it, she would likely be able to get out.

If she could bring herself to bomb it. Samus swallowed guiltily, remembering the bats. Still... It wouldn't make such an impact from the inside, would it? She would have to try. Almost wishing there was no shaft there, she lay a bomb and let it explode.

The earth beneath her crumbled and Samus fell.

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YeldiR frowned, the expression twisting his scaly face into a toothy grimace. Something in his plan wasn't working. His project was doing fine; better, in fact, than expected. But the view screen he had been monitoring intensely had shown no signs of anything entering the area it was focused on.

He shook his head, one sharp claw tracing a delicate line on the control panel it was tapping. It was 001 who had thought of this particular aspect of the plan; yeldiR was best at having the idea—brilliant ones, if he could say so himself—preferring to let his underlings work out the fine print. He had enough work to do as it was.

Suddenly, a motion on the screen caught his eye. Was it...? Yes. Oh, yes.

YeldiR commed the generator room. "001, I need you to get five ZE squads up to console B14. Now."

"Yes, sir," the man said.

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Crap, Samus thought, crap, crap, crap. Her micro-tuned reflexes made her uncurl immediately in the air, hitting the ground an instant later. The moment her feet were stable, she spun a whiplash circle in place, searching the area she had fallen into for enemies. But she was in luck--the room seemed to be empty. Samus's rapid heartbeat slowed as she surveyed her surroundings more closely. She had seen too many trick blocks leading to giant creatures bent on her destruction for comfort.

It was a small place, a few meters across at the most, squarish and with only one entrance other than the jagged hole in the ceiling that she had fallen through. She stared up at it, wondering... the ventilation shaft must've been directly above the ceiling of the room and too weak to hold up under her bomb blast. Typical space pirate construction.

Finally, a panel along the right-hand wall caught her attention. Samus stared. This was beyond reason, beyond hope. It was an empty computer console—maybe an alternate way of reaching a leader from an isolated part of the base. Still cautious, she switched to her scan visor and searched carefully for traps, in all the settings; finding none, Samus turned on the combat visor once again, for alert, and set the fingers of her left hand to the keyboard.

Long experience of hacking while in the power suit had taught her to type quickly with only one hand. She wasn't quite sure how long she stood there, hunched over the panel, brow furrowed in concentration behind her visor. But space pirate computer systems obviously weren't built with security focus in mind.

Mainframe database...station's log...search...keyword(s)... Samus entered the information and scrolled down the results. Somewhere she registered the fact that her hand was shaking, but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered. She wouldn't have noticed if the room had come crashing down around her, if a squad of screeching space pirates had burst in.

Nothing mattered.

There were several entries that had the words she was searching for in proliferation, and Samus selected the one that was of the earliest date. The log entry popped up in a second, and she began to read...

No. This must be wrong. Samus shook her head slowly, feeling her mind lock down, as if to shut out the information. No...

Contacted by a man from federation today. Top HQ official, name of Adam Malkovich. Very interested in the power we're gaining. Offered services in return for a share in any profits. Debating how to leave federation's hold without suspicion...

Samus blinked, as if by closing her eyes to the offensive matter it would go away. As if by closing her eyes, she would wake up and this would all be a dream—a nightmare that she could just shake off, and return to her normal, unmuddled life.

She had wished so long for Adam to be somehow, miraculously, alive; now, she thought bitterly, it would have been so much easier if he had just stayed 'dead.' Comfortably, unquestionably dead. At least that meant he had been a good person, without a shadow of doubt...the person she had thought he was.

Maybe, Samus reasoned, life would be better if we all just didn't think.

She finally forced herself to move, her footsteps seeming to float, every sound and action taking on a dreamlike unreality. She had done what she had come to do, something said, so why not leave; but it too felt fuzzy and tired. The trip across the room to the portal was an eternity, experienced blindly—don't think, and it will all go away.

Then, just as she reached the exit, it was opened from the outside.

A horde of leering space pirates trouped in with lightning speed, claws clicking maniacally. It was only a matter of seconds before they had her surrounded, dozens of red eyes gleaming with deep-rooted hatred and not a little fear. Still wary, they closed in, ready to leap back the moment she attacked. But the Hunter was eerily, unreally still.

She didn't care anymore.

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(just a footnote—don't worry, I do like happy endings.

Merry waiting for the next chapter!)