I'm sorry that one reviewer finds with story boring without Tal. Samus is a character that I enjoyed writing very highly, and I feel she could carry a story on her own. This has been entire written, so the plot will not be changed to accomodate readers, but... please stick around. I think you will find it is worth it to continue reading.
And yes, the last chapter demonstrates a good reason not to mess with Samus.
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Chapter 19: First of the Last
Holding back by the doorway, Samus continued to monitor the troop status around the hanger. Most of them were overall guarding the area of C12, but there were a fair number inside the hanger as well. All of them were clustered around her ship. That by itself changed her emotions to a cross between curious and nervous. Did whoever controlled these corrupt GC troops have it out for her?
Breaking through the surrounding layer of soldiers had been easy. She hadn't set off any alarms and hadn't even had to kill any of them. Up to this point she was perfect. Unfortunately, she couldn't just sneak past these guys.
Worse, there appeared to be one bounty hunter guarding the ship as well. That made things considerably more difficult. Presumably there was only one... there could be others using cloaking equipment just as she was. Opening the door before her manually to just a crack, Samus flipped up her visor to avoid a scrambling cloaker and glanced into the area.
Troops were positioned around her ship, and her ship alone. They appeared to be facing outward in every direction. From what she could see, there was still only one bounty hunter, sitting roughly near the middle and keeping watch. Good.
Activating full cloaking technology, Samus slipped through the crack in the door. It was interesting stuff indeed. As much as she understood it, the suit bent light around her, making her completely invisible to the common eye. Even if someone had superhuman vision, the best they might be able to detect would be a slight disturbance in their surroundings.
Unfortunately, this also left her completely blind. That would have been a serious drawback, except for infrared mode. Gauging where she was by heat, Samus walked directly into the center of the chamber, hiding in plain sight. Walking while unable to see was only minorly difficult... it had been a few years since she'd been forced to do such a thing.
Raising both gun arms, Samus began charging them to maximum power. The energy use would be noticed rather quickly, but her element of surprise was already well in place. Waiting until the bounty hunter suddenly jolted in surprise, Samus fired both cannons forward into the mass of troops.
There was no recoil from the energy weapons, but Samus hurled herself backward anyway, dropping the cloak. Several charged shots crashed into the ground where she had been formerly. Breaking into a run to her right, Samus glanced over the group with real eyes.
Many of them now littered the floor, taken out by her massive shots. None of them appeared to have struck the ship, which was as she had planned it. The tricky part would be taking all of them out quickly enough to avoid backup, but carefully enough to avoid damaging her ship. At the moment the question was if she had killed the bounty hunter.
Two rockets flew through the air toward her the next instant, answering Samus' question. Blasting both out of the sky, Samus fired back toward the bounty hunter. Her aim was jostled considerably because she had to jerk back to avoid further gunfire. Those troops were going to be a serious annoyance...
Breaking into a run for the door, Samus decided to forgo shooting for the moment. Too much gunfire to effectively dodge. Reaching the wall, Samus ran up the side a short distance before activating magnetic boots. She continued to run up the side of the wall until she reached the top of the hanger.
Moving to the ceiling, Samus glanced down at the troops, still firing at her. They were terrible shots, if they couldn't even get close while she was running in magnetic boots. Then the bounty hunter started firing as well, forcing Samus to use a bit more fancy footwork. She fired back for good measure, though the bounty hunter dodged those attacks as well.
Abruptly Samus put on a burst of her jet pack, shooting across the ceiling and reattaching to it just above the troops. They needed a moment to retrain their guns to fire on her... unfortunately for them, Samus didn't. Plasma rained down upon the troops, decimating most of them. Almost done, then.
Several rockets flew up toward Samus, more than she could shoot down. Targeting the floor with her grappling hook, Samus braced herself as she was jerked away from the ceiling and hurtled toward the ground at a startling rate. The missiles crashed into the ceiling above her, breaking loose major portions of it.
Bringing her feet to the ground before she landed, Samus retracted the grappling hook while swiping the legs out from under the bounty hunter. Firing a short concussive burst, Samus sent her opponent flying across the room. Not a lot of damage, but it would buy time.
Realizing that chunks of the ceiling were tumbling through the air toward her spaceship, Samus devoted a few seconds to blowing them out of the sky, or at least off course. Couldn't have the ship being damaged. She barely rolled away the next moment as a massive burst of plasma destroyed the ground where she had stood.
Surprisingly, the stream of fire followed her rather quickly, striking her and knocking her out of ball form. The impact sent her sprawling back on the floor, where several of the nearer troops descended upon her. Laser blades hummed at the edges of their rifles.
Well... ow. They must have managed to set up a machine gun with a shifting turret. Looking over the damage reports, Samus decided they weren't as bad as she had thought and mostly to armor anyway. Still, that had to be taken care of. Like the soldiers aiming to cut her while she lay prone on the floor.
Throwing herself to her back, Samus kicked away the nearest two then flipped to her feet. With no real time to fire on the remaining others, she basically just smacked them upside the head with the guns surrounding her hands. Crude but workable.
Another stream of plasma fire flew in her direction, missing but moving across the floor toward her. So they had fired up the machine gun again, and didn't seem to care if they shot their soldiers while missing her. But no matter. This time she was ready for it. Last time she had rolled, it had felt superior to her prior rolling system before. Perhaps...
The gunner manning the turret continued to fire, drawing closer to the target. Abruptly the bounty hunter rolled to the side. Gaping, the gunner tried to sweep his line of fire after her. She had curled into a ball, and her bio suit appeared to be created to make her roughly spherical. Now she was rolling across the ground toward them at a fair rate, zig-zagging and avoiding being hit by the machine gun fire.
She passed out of his line of sight, and the gunner had a moment to wonder how she had gotten past him. Then the mounted gun before him was blown away. He had time to jerk his head around and see Samus, out of her ball form, having fired backward. By that point it was too late.
Flipping to his feet, the bounty hunter swiftly skipped through his bio suit's vision modes. There was plenty of dying life around the room, and one high level of heat. Focusing there, he discovered Samus standing amid a group of freshly smoking bodies. Then it was finally between the two of them.
Firing full throttle with his left hand, the bounty hunter forced Samus to move completely to dodging. Perfect. Samus back flipped away, sprang off the ground with both hands and landed, skidding a short distance away. Meanwhile, she took the time to get her first real look at her opponent.
Whoever he was, he was wearing a light blue bio suit. It looked to be a very recent model, almost as good as the one she had used before these most recent modifications. While it was impossible to tell another bounty hunter's skill, you could generally get a good idea by the bio suit they wore. This wasn't a good sign.
Before she could consider how to fight back, Samus realized that he had charged up a major attack of his own. Abruptly swinging his right arm, he launched a laser that blasted into the opposite wall and quickly swept to the left, aiming to slice her in half. It probably couldn't, but still, she didn't want to get hit by light that intense.
Just before the laser reached her, Samus threw herself back, bending over backward to touch the ground and barely evading the attack. Activating magnetic energy in her gun arm, Samus pulled both legs into the air and pulled an internal trigger. Plasma blew from the guns concealed in the soles of her feet, slamming the opposing bounty hunter into the opposite wall.
From the dust a wave of energy rained forward. Probably a spreadfire cannon, Samus considered as she jumped over the many bolts slamming into the hanger wall behind her. This place was going to come down around them if their fight lasted much longer. Activating her jet pack, Samus avoided falling back into the wave of attacks.
Suspending in midair, Samus saw the other bounty hunter bursting up toward her the very next moment. A slight smile appeared on her face a moment before being replaced with a completely serious expression. So he was inexperienced and just happened to own a high tech suit. That took some off her mind.
Samus' boot smashed directly into his helmet, sending him hurtling backward and slamming into the floor. His visor had several large cracks running across it, and his helmet registered severe damage. Follow up shots were fired, but he managed to roll backward away from them.
Planting his back to the wall, the bounty hunter opened fire with everything he had. The metal around his arms shifted, new energy cannons emerging from hidden locations and firing. Hot plasma flooded from his main cannons. He bent both knees slightly, revealing new openings that sent rockets flying into the fray as well. His hands were both burning hot from his cannons overheating, but he continued firing everything he had. Unless he managed to take her out now, she'd destroy him.
Eventually he could do no more; his ammunition supply was depleted and his energy stores drained. Both of his hand cannons were melted, probably taken out of commission fully by such strain on them. One side of the hanger before him was no more than slag, nothing stirred within it. Then he'd managed it...
An orange arm entered his vision the next instant, its gun loudly clicking against his visor in the silence. One shot rang out, and then the blue bio suit fell to the ground lifelessly. Turning from him, Samus swept her gaze around the hanger, looking for any other adversaries. There appeared to be none.
Blowing imaginary smoke off of one energy cannon, Samus let herself smile slightly. Subtlety? What was that?
Fortunately, her ship had been far enough across the hanger that the other bounty hunter's mad attacked hadn't really damaged it. Apparently the generators set up here were still working as well, which meant there was power to the computers at the docking bay. And computers could be hacked.
Opening her ship's docking ramp from afar, Samus reached it just as it tapped to the ground. Striding up the ramp, she closed it behind her with another command and moved to the cockpit. Good to be back here again. This ship was more her home than anywhere else in the galaxy.
Linking to her computer, Samus began uploading her bio suit's new contents with one arm. At the same time she shifted the gun away from her other arm, leaving her hand free to use the controls. She set up a program to trick the docking bay into briefly entering an emergency release and then sat back and waited for both operations.
When the download had finished, Samus quickly found the new floating station that now appeared on her map. That was the only real lead she had to go on, but Samus had the feeling that she was going to get some answers there. As the doors opened and a vacuum rushed into the hanger, Samus guided her ship out of the station, ignoring the flashing warning lights. None of this would matter in a second.
Whoever was on that station was going to get a little visit.
