My design for the suit was roughly based on what the original suit looked like (with a certain degree of clarification from later games), and the powers commonly seen in the Metroid series. Then there were a few changes for the sake of story or what I felt was more realistic in a technological sense.
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Chapter 17: Allied Front
"What the hell is that?" one of the guards muttered, seeing shots go flying from the thick trees on one corner of the room. The others frowned and got better grips on their weapons.
"Think someone attacked the gal in the trees?" one of the others asked.
"Damn, I told her not to hide in someplace so difficult to see."
"Should we attack whatever's left?" another questioned.
At that moment something emerged from the trees, and all the guards immediately trained their guns upon it. They relaxed visibly when they recognized the familiar green bio suit. She was dragging a grey-clad body behind her.
"Somebody attacked?" the leader of the guards called across the room. The bounty hunter nodded and gestured toward the body disdainfully. Turning away from them, she moved down the corridor, still dragging the unlucky attacker.
"That's bounty hunters for ya," one of the guards commented. "I tell ya what, they scare me."
-
Reaching the door at the end of the corridor, Samus opened a tall compartment and dropped the bounty hunter's body inside. They'd find it eventually, but probably not soon enough. She didn't need very much time inside the base itself. Hopefully she wouldn't be forced to speak with anyone, because she didn't think she could hold her cover very long.
It was good to be in a bio suit again, even if it wasn't her own. This one was a bit too big for her, not to mention being a sickening green color. More importantly, it was woefully inadequate in terms of firepower and equipment. Still, it was big improvement, and now she didn't have to worry about being shot from behind and dying instantly.
Opening the door, Samus stepped through and discovered herself in a small military base. There were people everywhere in blue Galactic Council uniforms, fitting armor, polishing weapons, talking in low voices. A few bounty hunters were scattered among them.
Not letting herself slow down or glance around, Samus continued forward as if she knew where she was going. A few of the bounty hunters noticed her, but merely nodded. Quite fortunate, assuming that they knew whoever the woman was she had killed. Makeshift structures had been set up in the center of the camp, and it was toward these that Samus moved. They seemed like a good starting point, anyway.
Ducking beneath the low entrance, Samus found herself in a small, dark room. Thankfully it was empty, and she took the opportunity to slip into the shadows. Now the problem was getting information without seeming too suspicious. It wouldn't do to just ask any of the soldiers, if they even knew things that she didn't.
Moving further in, Samus swiftly stepped past several occupied doorways. So the leaders were here, apparently. Eventually finding a cubicle-like room that was empty, she slid inside. There was a small military desk in one corner, and Samus moved toward it, glancing over the papers.
The usual, overall. This didn't appear to be a very important person's office. Still, it would do for now. Until she found a computer terminal with a proper linking port, she didn't expect much anyway. One report on the table caught her interest, as it was obviously about the mission at hand. Picking it up, Samus pretended to be looking it over speculatively, trying to look as casual as possible in case someone walked in.
To: Colonel Sander's Division
From:
Classification: High Propensity/Priority One
Ops Bin: CDLK / 47 / 7780 / RNK
The only objective is to acquire the subject. The only limitation is that the subject must still be alive. Every method is authorized. Use all force necessary to accomplish the objective. Consider the deadline to be within seventy two hours.
Odd. It seemed vaguely like a military brief, but one very improperly done. The From blank was mysteriously empty. While it was in the form of military messages, it read more like something covert... which perhaps it was. In any case, this confirmed that they were here for Tal... too late. Not that they could have gotten him anyway.
Setting the paper back down exactly as it had been before, Samus quickly looked for anything else of value and found nothing. Wherever the occupant of this office was, they would probably be back soon. This whole area was too cramped for her comfort anyway. Stepping out of the room, Samus quickly vacated the hastily constructed building.
Just as she reached the exit, a voice stopped her. It was speaking softly and not to her, but the words immediately caught her attention. Drifting into the shadows by the poorly lit doorway, she continued to listen.
"-getting suspicious. How long can we continue this charade?"
"Four hours by my estimate."
"Aren't we supposed to be out of here in twenty hours anyway?" a gruff voice asked
"That's the time, yes," a polished voice answered. "But in this situation it is higher priority to accomplish our object than to leave at the appointed time."
"The boss'll skin our hides if we don't get it," Gruff muttered.
"I can assure you that my men will stay as long as necessary," the original voice spoke up. "But what about all the others? I'm not their captain."
"We're paying them well," Polished told him reassuringly, "and the bounty huntershave too much at stake here to leave. There's no need to discuss this; the mission itself should be a higher priority."
"I'm just worried the Galactic Council will bring things down around our heads," Gruff interrupted. "Can the higher ups really stall things as long as they say they can? No one's gonna want to stay here if police forces are coming down on them soon and-"
"Even if they declare us terrorists, it won't matter," Captain interrupted. "My troops aren't loyal to the GC itself and the mercenaries could care less."
"I feel certain that Divel will be able to hold off any executive decision," Polished stated sharply, obviously annoyed. "Our concern is not about anything other than getting the specimen. We've lost track of it in any case, and about half the station is beyond our reach."
"We know that!" Captain snapped. "But what can we do about it?"
"I would propose that..."
As their conversation drifted into specific tactics, Samus stopped listening. She took a moment to collect her thoughts more completely, assimilating the new information that had been acquired. Most importantly, she now knew that these troops weren't actually Galactic Council forces. At least they weren't part of the main army in a strict sense.
They had been speaking of extremely high levels of bureaucracy. Which could only mean that they, and hence Project Darklight, had support all the way up the command chain. How much of the Galactic Council was corrupted and in on the operation? It appeared to be an extremely powerful faction, given that they could bring this many loyal soldiers to bear and hire even more.
Most suspicious was their mention of "Divel." Could it be the same Mr. Divel she was familiar with? That would fit the facts pretty well. Also, it didn't do anything to comfort her. Slowly this problem was expanding to be far more than personal. Shaking her head to clear it, Samus walked swiftly from the building.
Doing her best to look as though she knew what she was doing, Samus moved through the camp. There were GC forces lounging everywhere, and yet more bounty hunters. If this got violent it'd be a bloodbath, with friendly fire doing more damage than anything else. Best to get out before anyone had any idea she had entered.
Spying a multi-user computer terminal that appeared to be running by a generator, Samus moved to it as if she had been intending to go there all along. It wasn't the best of systems, but for the moment she would take anything she could get. There were a fair number of officials around the computer, some of them working with it. This part would be tricky, but pretty useful.
Reaching the computer, Samus folded her arms and waited, tapping one foot impatiently. Eventually one of the operators got the hint and moved out of the way with a gulp. Idly Samus wondered if the bounty hunter she'd killed had been particularly vicious. In any case, she now had access to a terminal. Finding the bio suit port, Samus plugged in her left arm and began downloading all files. Getting her other hand free, she began working with the terminal itself.
All they had on the computer was a lot of troop movements and orders and the like. Nothing useful to her, but used as evidence it would be damning. Combined with everything else, this would put certain individuals behind bars for life. Meanwhile, however...
Bringing up a map of the station itself, Samus discovered that it was modified with troop locations. Exactly what she needed. That file would be downloaded for future reference, but meanwhile there was another bit of important information she needed. Her ship had been docked in the twelfth hanger, and she'd need to reach it soon if she wanted to follow up on any of this.
Surrounded. The computer listed a great many troops around the area, and a fair number solely guarding her ship. Raising her eyebrows, Samus considered their motivations for that. Someone was after her especially... was that another issue entirely or did they know that she had some connection to Tal?
Not that it mattered. She'd have to break through the security in any case. That would require her real bio suit, hopefully with a new set of upgrades. For now, this would be enough. Waiting for the download to complete, Samus meaninglessly tapped around on the computer for a while and then left the terminal.
Breathing a sigh of relief as no one questioned her, Samus swiftly made her way out of the GC base. She was weaving through the troops when a group abruptly emerged from the doorway she had entered. Bounty hunters, too. They didn't appear to intend to leave the doorway for some time, standing around and apparently chatting. Not good.
Changing direction at a feasible point, Samus moved instead toward another exit. There had to be another way to get back to the area controlled by bounty hunters safely. Two massive blast doors signaled the entrance to a hanger. Blast! She was already heading in that direction, to switch would seem suspicious.
Using the bio suit's codes to get through the door, Samus moved into the hanger. This was the second... and probably the reason that the Galactic Council troops took over C8. Unlike almost everyone else, they had access to the docking bays of the ship. With the power being out, there was no central command to stop them from unloading as many troops as they might want. Just as Samus was trying to look busy, lights began flashing along the sides of the walls.
Another ship docking? Concealing her surprise, Samus went on about her non-work. Everyone in the hanger was in a vacuum suit, so they must just be docking ships the old fashioned way. For a few minutes air was rushed out of the chamber, Samus switched to her own supply, and then the room shivered.
Massive doors at one end of the room began sliding open. The movement was slow and in spurts, probably because they were using generator power. In any case, the docking ship flew into the hanger and settled on the ground.
From the corner of her eyes, Samus gave the vessel a good examination. Interesting... a military ship that was only legally used in times of war. Its presence here was highly illegal, at the least. None of the other people working in the vacuum of the hanger appeared to care or notice, so this must be common place. Sleek sides, an elongated shape, several heavy missile launchers under each wing... a good ship.
As the hatch near the bottom of the ship opened, Samus moved to a different location to get a better glimpse of those arriving. Quite a few people were watching them, so it wouldn't look all that suspicious. These people were apparently very important to the plan.
That settled it. She had to sneak into the ship somehow and see what information she could find. Surely there was something that would be useful there. Various types of people were leaving the ship. Most of them looked like military officers and bureaucrats. They weren't wearing vacuum suits, which meant they just assumed the hanger's air supply would be restored and no one else would dock. Probably true, but still arrogant.
After discussing a few things with people near the ship, the suits went to the airlock almost immediately. Workers moved to the ship shortly after, carrying small grey boxes from it toward one of the walls. Supplies of some sort, but that didn't matter to Samus very much at the moment. Her focus was solely on getting inside.
Carefully watching the workers unloaded the ship, Samus figured out a rough schedule of the timing of their trips. Watching it out of the corner of her eye, she moved through the hanger. Two tall, cylindrical generators sat humming on the floor, blue electricity crackling up them.
Pretty efficient models, Samus observed with slight admiration. These troops were certainly well equipped. Far better than ordinary soldiers, anyway. Plenty of people had the money to do such things... but where were they getting the supplies from? Surely they were stored in some other location and taken to the Bounty Hunter HQ as needed.
Continuing to walk at a fast clip, Samus moved behind a large box and was momentarily eclipsed from view. The next moment she jerked herself into a crevice between boxes. Sliding between two more and moving to the edge of a row, she glanced out at the room. There appeared to be relatively few workers between her and the generators. Good.
Sliding like a shadow from one hiding point to another, Samus worked her way nearer the generators. If there weren't so many things lying around here the task would have been completely impossible. As it was, she managed to get very near the generators without being seen by any of the workers.
Waiting until she got an opening, Samus dove from her hiding spot. She somersaulted over the floor and between the two generators. They were too close together for comfort, but she crouched low. Between the bulk of the generators themselves and the glow created by their energy, she was practically invisible.
Looking down at the floor, Samus found the wires connecting generators to what they powered. These two basically worked for the entire hanger and the surrounding area. There was a mess of black wires that branched into different directions, but Samus methodically worked her way through them.
Eventually finding the cord that powered the lights, Samus traced it back to its main power outlet. It was possible for such things to become loose, though on units like this it would never happen. At least, it wouldn't happen normally.
All light abruptly vanished from the room, plunging it into total darkness. There were assorted screams and curses, and a broad variety of noises as people banged into various objects in the darkness. In the confusion Samus slipped over the floor using infrared vision and easily stepped up the walkway into the docked ship.
Glancing around inside and searching for electrical signals, Samus practically dove for the cockpit. It wouldn't be long before someone had the sense to use a battery-powered light to reconnect the generator. They wouldn't be stupid enough to think it had just magically come loose on its own. From this point forward her time was limited.
Bringing the screen online, Samus quickly glanced over it, searching for something of value. She was really here only on intuition, anyway. But surely a ship like this would have something worth stealing- ah.
Their set of preprogrammed coordinates and maps of the surrounding area were all loaded. Downloading them into her suit, Samus looked over the map with her naked eye. This map had the former locations of Stations Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald all marked... promising indeed. Most recently the station had accessed the code for Bounty Hunter Headquarters, but before that...
Another station. One she'd never heard of before. It was resting in the sensor shadow of a rocky planet not far from this station. Looking through the ship's past records, however, Samus discovered that its location was slowly changing. A drifting station, then. Probably not randomly drifting, either; most likely it shifted location to throw off anyone looking for it. Without the proper data, reaching it would be tough, even if you knew about it.
Lights flickered back on, and Samus winced. While this information was important, there might be other things on the computer as well. Narrowing her eyes, she redoubled her efforts on the computer.
One of the workers glanced around the corner through the ship suspiciously. He leaned into the cockpit room and discovered all as it should be. The room was empty, the screen was off, the ship was still on standby mode. Nodding and grunting, he moved back out of the ship to carry another box.
Letting go of her magnetic hold on the wall above the door, Samus dropped to the floor soundlessly. This was it, then. At least she had the coordinates she needed. If she could get out with this bio suit in good enough condition to transfer the information to her normal suit, her mission would be accomplished.
The real problem was getting out. While she would normally be tempted to rush out shooting, she really didn't want to try to get away in this bio suit. Not enough firepower to make her way through the entire GC camp and whatever bounty hunters happened to be nearby. Getting from here to the safe zone was no cakewalk, either.
All she needed was a few minutes of safety. If she escaped the base itself, it didn't matter if they knew she had been here. She'd cleaned the logs of her access and data downloading, but they'd probably piece together that someone had been inside pretty quickly.
Moving to the back of the ship, Samus scanned the area around her for any life forms. Bringing out a laser knife, which was annoyingly a far less intense version than her own, Samus began cutting her way through the thick ship hull. Eventually she made a circle large enough for her to get through easily.
Activating one magnet boot, Samus locked it onto the circle of the ship hull and pulled it into the ship. Setting it down beside the hole, she slipped down through the hole. Abruptly exposed in the middle of the hanger, Samus rolled behind one of the legs of the ship, which was poor cover. No one yelled yet.
Suddenly needing to be somewhere else quite soon, Samus began walking briskly toward the exit. When anyone tried to make eye contact with her she did her best to seem extremely focused and busy. She had almost reached the airlock exit when abruptly someone yelled.
Damn. That hadn't worked well. Behind her, the entire area was devolving into complete chaos. There were people yelling about an intruder, and a great many men rushing about with guns. They were too late to stop Samus from entering the airlock, but rushed in her direction, yelling and shooting a few times. Not good at all.
Stepping out of the airlock at the other side, Samus began moving at the fastest reasonable pace through the camp. It was still relatively peaceful. Clenching her fists, Samus brought both of her arm cannons online and began charging them. The peace was going to be fleeting indeed.
