The reactions on the bridge of the BSL ship varied. First the captain had his communications officer inform Samus that she was drifting from the designated course. He had no reaction to this, as it was such a minor thing. Then, with no response, and realizing what was about to happen, he sent a message to inform her that she was heading into an asteroid field. Then, as Samus' ship had exploded, there was silence and shocked looks. The captain shook it off and ordered one of his officers to scan for signs of life. And, surprisingly, they found one. Seems Samus had planned for this sort of thing, and that just before the ship crashed, when the computer had calculated that it was too late to do anything, the ship closed an auto-escape pod around the command chair and ejected Samus. She would be perfectly fine, minus the cost of her customized star ship, as soon as she came to.
Or if she came to. When the BSL ship brought her on board, she was still unconscious. The Onboard Medic Simulation quickly deduced her problem. She was infested. That hornoad she'd killed on SR388 wasn't really a hornoad. It was a life-form that no one had ever come in contact with before. A gelatinous parasite that lived to destroy. What it would do is infest a creature by absorbing itself into the bloodstream of a targeted victim. There, it would multiply at a molecular level, until the parasite's cells were all over the body's major functions. The victim wouldn't even realize that anything was wrong until their central nervous system was overrun with the parasites, at which point they would rather quickly lose consciousness and fall into a coma. When the body was totally infested, the parasites would work to kill the host, as well as taking DNA samples from the various cells they infested. When the host would die, the parasites would leave the body, once again taking the shape of a gelatinous blob. From this point on, however, that particular gelatinous blob would have the ability to mimic the DNA of the former host, allowing it to reshape into a perfect copy of the creature. The copy could then use any and all natural abilities the original host had access to. So far, it seemed that there was no creature that could withstand the parasites, and all who were infested inevitably died.
And now Samus Aran fell into that category as well. The OMS declared that the hunter had a 0.873 prognosis for survival, and her body was sent to Galactic Federation HQ for extreme emergency medical treatment.
Unfortunately, there was an unforeseen problem. Part of the reason Aran worked so well with her Power Suit was that it had organic components as well as mechanical. It was literally connected to her body once she put it on. It was integrally joined to the bounty hunter, so that the surgeons were totally unable to remove her suit while she was unconscious. In fact, the parasite had travelled through Samus and infected certain parts of her suit. While this unconscious lockdown was a good feature to have if Samus was knocked out by a Space Pirate, it was not a positive thing when the suit needed to be removed to save her life. The medical teams were forced to surgically remove parts of Samus' suit in order to keep her alive a little bit longer.
The senator stood inside the operating theatre, looking down at the table. It seemed ludicrous to see a patient on the table wearing heavy armour. He glanced to the side of the room to see an interesting sight: floating in a containment tank, suspended by a thick liquid, were the removed parts of Aran's armour. The surgeons had removed the outer layer of armour completely, making it look like Samus Aran floated motionless in the tube, and someone completely different, owing to the look of her reduced armour, was lying prone on the table. Without taking his eyes off the sight, Billings softly said "Johnston." Within two seconds, his aide was standing next to him. "Yes sir?" Billings now glanced over at him. "Have the infected suit parts shipped back to the BSL station, for a thorough examination. Even if we can't stop this… this thing, well, just imagine what we could do if we could find a way to make more armour like that Power Suit. An army of Samus Arans, all following my-" He blinked. "…our every order. Oh, and Johnston? After the bounty hunter dies, cut her out of what's left of her suit and have that examined, too." Johnston nodded, hiding a look of disgust, and spoke into the headset he wore. After a bit, he turned back to Billings. "Sir, I've received confirmation that BSL is sending a courier ship this way to pick her suit up. It should be arriving in a few hours." Billings nodded slightly. "Good. That will be all, Johnston." Johnston left, once again promising himself he would get a job for someone who didn't make him sick. Meanwhile, a single scientist below was conducting a simulation on a medical computer. A simulation that ended the way he hoped it would. He slowly smiled and nodded.
