This chapter is really just setting up for the next one, which is probably my favorite chapter of the series. Thank you very much for the extensive responses to my previous chapter.
Chapter 27: Arrangements
Dodging a claw as it rushed toward her, Samus leapt over the tail that immediately followed. Momentarily she was suspended in the air near its head, and then she spun rapidly, smashing two kicks into the creature's jaw. It stumbled slightly, but by the time she hit the ground it was already striking. Though she managed to dodge a sweep of its tail, the alien's bulk struck her, sending her falling in a heap on the floor.
Before she could move its claws slammed down. Surprisingly, they did not hurt her in the slightest... but only because they were pinning her legs and arms, she realized. Great. This creature liked to play with its food. Hopefully it would end relatively soon. The massive head loomed over her, teeth almost gleaming in the light.
Surprisingly, Samus found that she actually had a few regrets. In the majority of her life, she had been ready to die and accepting of that. She had lived so that she would not be troubled by her death. But not now. There were so many things she never had a chance to do with Tal...
But the creature wasn't biting her in half, it was sort of just snuffling her. The massive nostrils continued to sniff at her for some time, leaving Samus only to raise an eyebrow. For a moment the creature did not move, then it opened its maw and began licking her with a large black tongue. It was dry and tickled slightly, if a bit rough.
"How many licks does it take to get to the center of a bounty hunter?" one of the business men snickered amid the laughter of all of them. They seemed to find the fact that her final moments were being dragged out even longer absolutely hilarious.
They were wrong. With almost a sixth sense, Samus realized that their plan had some massive flaw in it. This creature had no intention of eating her, or even of harming her. Could it actually be a very gentle beast? But no, she could sense a terrible amount of violence within it, it was just not directed toward her.
Now it was just looking down at her, uncomfortably close, eyes blinking slowly. It let out a barely audible whine, like an eager puppy would. For a brief moment Samus was stunned, but she found that it wasn't too much of a problem to get over it. There was almost certainly a reason for this, but at the moment that really didn't matter.
"I know you can't understand me," she told it softly, "but I hope you're the smart type of alien. On three let's attack, okay?"
It looked at her, uncomprehending. As she began to count down from three, however, it began to shift restlessly and lash its tail through the air. Perhaps it could sense that she was about to do something. When Samus began to move, the huge claws pulled away from her, and the creature leapt away.
Glass caved away before it, shattering throughout the room and the neatly suited men, who were now screaming. Running directly in its wake, Samus jumped through the hole it had created. Wildly attacking, the beast had already killed many of the bureaucrats, though it didn't seem to have a particular goal. One tried to pull out a gun to fire upon it but was smashed by a massive claw through a wall.
Seeing Mr. Divel fleeing on the far side of the room, Samus quickly ran to the gun lying on the ground. Kicking it into the air and catching it, Samus fired after him. Surprisingly, Mr. Divel rolled just as she fired, and her first shots missed. Before she could fire on him more seriously, a door clapped down behind him. She'd never catch him now.
Letting the issue go, Samus instead contented herself with picking off the remainder of the corruption in the Galactic Council. She could deal with Mr. Divel later. One by one, the parts of his plan were falling around him. If he had nothing, he could not be too dangerous. Not that she was about to let him off.
For a moment the large alien moved aimlessly, as if unsure what to do. Before it had seemed to have a specific purpose, and now it was adrift. It glanced at her, seemed not to care and then let out a roar and broke through a door. Soon it was lost in the corridors.
Moving at a more sedate pace, Samus found a computer terminal that wasn't completely smashed and looked for her bio suit's energy signature. It was found relatively easily. The computer indicated that it had been transported to a specific room and then never picked up. Veronica's room, most likely. What could have happened to her?
Picking up speed, Samus moved toward what were apparently Veronica's temporary quarters. The door was locked, but that problem lasted only as long as it took to pull a trigger. Blowing through the door, Samus entered the room and discovered it was completely unoccupied. Good.
On the opposite side of the room her bio suit rested. Samus let out a slight sigh of relief when she realized that it had not been tampered with. If she ever ran into Veronica again she was just going to kill her instantly, if only for threatening to mess with her bio suit.
Stepping to the suit and quickly beginning to fuse it together around her, Samus considered her next steps. Now that she had her suit, she needed to acquire the rest of her things: her ship and Tal. The former was probably still in a docking bay and would need to be found quickly; the latter could handle itself and would show up at an opportune time.
Bringing the bio suit completely online, Samus stretched just a bit and then left the room. Much better, as usual. There weren't very many reasons she'd want to leave her bio suit. The hallway outside was as ordinary as all the other hallways. But being in this secret area of the station, it probably contained better sources of information. Perhaps where to find her ship.
Eventually she did find it, without too much difficulty. It was registered completely legally in one of the civilian docking bays, just under different identity codes. However, it was just a low level diplomatic procedure, and faking high level access wasn't too difficult. Just the type of thing a bounty hunter could reasonably use if taking a job for the Galactic Council. Keeping the maps in mind, Samus moved toward the hanger.
That was how they operated, she reflected. Not so much through illegal means, though they certainly used those excessively, but mostly through simple, ordinary methods. All the corrupted members of the Galactic Council had been elected as legally as anyone else. Of course, they were funded by special interest groups and employed all tactics, just like any politician. It was truly a wonder that evil could work so effectively through good. Then again, perhaps it was not a wonder at all.
She boarded a mostly empty shuttle that took her back to the normal part of the station. There she found another shuttle that would take her far closer to her own docking bay. This one was filled with people, all going various places and looking quite busy.
None of them talked to her, mercifully. But few people were likely to approach a focused looking bounty hunter in a heavily armored machine of destruction. Standing in the back of the shuttle, Samus just waited for it to reach her own stop. Around her people officiously wrote on clipboards, made calls on portable communications devices, spoke in quite tones. Business as usual.
A group of wide-eyed schoolchildren got on at the next stop, and Samus internally winced. For one at the innocence pervading them that was so alien, and also because merely being in her presence put them in danger. Hopefully Mr. Divel would not try to kill her. Civilian deaths always annoyed Samus.
Their teacher told them a sugar-coated story about their government. Glossing over the people killed in the creation of the Galactic Council, the planets destroyed under a philosophy of preemption, the brutal politics that had shaped the Council into the machine that it was. But they were children... they had only so long.
Swiftly the shuttle reached a point quite close to the docking bay her ship was held in. The public transportation was really quite excellent here. Apparently a council member named Stevenson had put through the legislation that made these quite common. She exited the doors, and was given plenty of room in doing so. Over her shoulder she noticed a little girl watching after her with adoring eyes. Poor kid.
This part of the station was filled with bustling crowds. Not good. It quickly became obvious, however, that nothing was going to attack her. Instead Samus merely focused on reaching her goal as soon as possible.
It was surreal, unnatural. Just walking through these crowds of people all intently focused on themselves. None of them knew that most of the Galactic Council had been slaughtered. They were ignorant of the corruption that had spread throughout their system. Little did any of them know that death and chaos reigned further up the station. Hopefully they would never know.
Finding her docking bay, Samus discovered it was locked to public access. It took little effort to guess the reason. Instead of breaking or hacking the door in front of everyone, she prowled around the hanger to a better spot. There was a large library, and it was of course completely empty.
Finding her way to the back, Samus pretended to be reading a random novel while scanning maps of the hanger her ship was in. It also served as a docking bay, but one of the more protected ones. From the locked public door there was a fairly long hallway, then a large room, then the hanger itself. At the moment she was just to the side of the middle of the hallway.
So be it, then. Setting the book back down on the shelf, Legend of Link, it appeared, she glanced toward the walls. Checking to make sure no one was watching her, Samus brought out a laser knife and began cutting a hole in the wall. That would be incredibly obvious later on, but for now all she cared about was speed. Taking away the section of the wall and replacing it behind her, she did a half-hearted welding job. Good enough for a few hours.
The corridor was completely empty; the locked door at the other end was doing its job. Moving to the door attaching to the chamber, Samus switched to infrared mode and scanned it. A fair number of people in it, all standing very still. Checking for energy readings she discovered all of them were packing military-grade weaponry. Great.
Stepping away from the door, Samus began charging her right cannon to full power. Upon finishing she fired the massive sphere of plasma, which tore through the door and blasted into the next room. With her left arm Samus fired a grappling hook. It trailed just in the wake of the former attack, clamping onto the opposite wall and immediately pulling her.
Sailing through the air, Samus picked off a few of the guards with her right arm. Touching the wall, she instantly slid down it to avoid fire in return. After knocking off a few more of the guards, she was forced to roll left as they changed the direction of their fire.
Hand springing across the floor, she managed to get good footing for the first time. Immediately she fired at full speed, dropping the rest of the guards, seconds before a few of them reached for an alarm. Then abruptly the room was quiet, smelling with the scent of burnt air and scorched metal.
Calmly lowering her guns, Samus moved toward the next door. There would probably be guards in the next area, too, if she knew her opponents' strategy. Most likely her ship was the only one in the hanger. Blasting the door aside, Samus entered.
Immediately she was on her guard at the sight that greeted her. There had indeed been a heavy guard present, but no longer. They and their weapons lay scattered about the floor, and massive portions of the floor and walls had been ripped away. Amidst all the chaos, her ship stood untouched and gleaming. Either there were aliens here, or...
"Samus." He stepped calmly from behind her ship, nodding in greeting. She could barely see his eyes through his exoskeleton, but she knew that they had lit up slightly.
"Tal." They approached each other calmly, both monitoring the surrounding area. Stopping a short distance apart from each other, neither spoke, just watching the other for some time. Eventually Samus smiled slightly. "It's good to see you again."
"Same here." He loved to see that smile. The expression was extremely rare on Samus' face, but when it appeared you always knew it was real. It was worth meeting her here just to earn that smile.
"Now what?" Samus asked. "Mr. Divel is still alive higher up, but pretty much everyone else involved is dead. I think he'll try to retaliate, but there's no way he can get to us before we leave, if that's what we want to do."
"That's a possible route. But I was also thinking we might want to just finish this once and for all." Tal retracted part of his exoskeleton long enough to pull something black and rectangular from his pocket. He held it up between two fingers and smiled slightly. "Everything. We've put so much work into this it'd be a shame not to put it to good use."
"I'm liking that idea." Samus turned to move from the room and Tal matched pace with her. "I have a suspicion Mr. Divel will be trying to keep himself from any culpability, so he might be going the same place we are. If we run into him don't hesitate to kill him; most of his cohorts are already dead anyway and I really don't have to worry about a murder rap."
"Glad to hear you handled things mostly yourself. All I had time to do was secure the ship area and make sure it was off limits to basically anyone. When we need to go back to it we can be pretty certain it'll still be there." As they passed into the normal area of the station Tal completely retracted his exoskeleton.
"While we're going," Samus continued softly, voice nearly lost in the chatter surrounding them, "I have a question to ask."
"Go ahead. I don't need to keep any secrets."
"There was a pretty big alien they tried to make kill me." She paused as they entered the shuttle and simultaneously moved to the back. "It didn't. Helped me, actually. You wouldn't have had anything to do with that, would you?"
"Ah. It actually worked." Tal closed his eyes slightly and kept speaking to her in a barely audible voice. "Yes, that was me. I had quite a few plans and it appears one was actually helpful. They were trying to find aliens, so I sent one in my control with orders to let itself be captured and then help you."
"They can understand orders that complex?" Samus asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Mostly... no. If you're very simplistic and repeat things they can follow longer orders. But it actually just had to find your scent. I marked you with one of my hormones earlier; none of the aliens I control will bother you. I didn't really ask but I hope you don't mind."
"Considering it saved my ass I'm not complaining," Samus told him. "What's that alien going to do now?"
"Leave the station. They really don't like people or traditional buildings. We shouldn't have to worry about it."
"Good. This is our stop." Both of them left the shuttle, and they were the only people who did so. As soon as the doors closed both of them picked up the pace to a light run.
"I trust you know where you're going?" Tal asked, voice changing in mid-sentence as his exoskeleton surrounded his mouth.
"I have a pretty good idea," she answered. "Mr. Divel is really a secondary goal; it's tough to know where he will be. Most likely he'll make his presence known by attacking us. But he really isn't our concern any more. All he has left are some troops and some political power. We can deal with both of those."
"It works," Tal nodded, sliding back slightly to let her lead. "With any luck we can get out of this without any further conflict."
"Hopefully. But have we ever had any luck in this entire mess?"
"At least some," Tal laughed softly. "You saved my life and we found each other again. I guess the true test of luck will be in how all of this turns out."
"Right," Samus agreed, slowing as they reached another shuttle. "This one should take us to the highest political levels. We'll skip the stop by the Assembly and go straight toward the stop by the Galactic Council chambers."
Merely nodding, Tal stepped into the shuttle as the doors opened. Both of them waited for some time for the computer to decide there were no further passengers, and then the machine took off down its magnetic tracks. Arming her weapons out of habit, Samus remained by the door, ready to leave as soon as necessary.
It was a short time later that Tal's head abruptly snapped to the side. Raising an eyebrow, Samus watched him silently, knowing he must have sensed something. Moving slowly to the back of the shuttle, he put his ear to the side for a moment, then stood and turned to her.
"We're being followed," he told her, "by several things with wings."
"How fast are they going?"
"Faster than this shuttle." Pulling out his data storage device, Tal flipped it across the shuttle and Samus caught it easily. "I'll take care of it."
"Feel free. Meet by the shuttles or at the ship."
With a slight wave, Tal ripped open the back door to the shuttle and leapt out into the tunnels speeding around him. He vanished to a mere speck before he even touched the ground. Ignoring the new wind resistence, Samus continued to wait for the shuttle to reach its next stop.
Landing and immediately back flipping, Tal did several hand springs backward to nullify his momentum. Now stationary, he leapt to the ceiling and dug in the claws on his feet. Folding his arms and hanging from the ceiling, he calmly waited for them to appear.
Very soon they flew into sight, wings barely flapping as nega photons sent them hurtling through the air. Three of them, Tal identified; all of them were clad in full exoskeleton armor. The leader of the group failed to slow down in time, and Tal clothes lined him before he could pass. As he was sent flipping to the tracks below, the other two slowed to a halt.
Immediately detaching from the ceiling, Tal dropped toward the ground. As he fell, he fired two brief shots from his hands, knocking away another attacker. Touching off the ground, Tal hurled himself through the air, approaching the third with surprising speed. In midair his claws slashed violently, shattering his opponent's defenses and sending him lifeless toward the ground.
Whirling, Tal smashed a foot into the side of the face of the exoskeleton flying up toward him, and brought it all the way down to the ground, embedding its head into the steel. These ones were stupid, he noted, decidedly inferior to the other members of the TA series that he had fought. Perhaps these were the failed attempts to copy his own genetics.
The remaining fighter was already attacking, a claw slashing for the back of his head. Not bothering to turn, Tal blocked it with a forearm, then whirled, attacking with his other hand. Retreating a few steps along the magnetic rail, his opponent evaded the attack and then struck again. It kept up an offensive, and abruptly Tal leapt away from it.
For a moment the twisted creature roared in triumph... and then the next shuttle smashed into its back, almost immediately bringing it down to the magnetic rail. Moments later Tal calmly landed in the center of the track. At this rate he would probably be able to catch up to Samus and-
His hand snapped up behind the back of his head, catching four long spikes that had been flying toward it. Slowly Tal turned, to look toward the opponent he knew was standing some distance from him in the center of the tracks. Had he failed to kill one of the three? No; not likely.
This being was obviously not a failed experiment like the others. It stood calmly, with its arms folded, exoskeleton covering it completely. Light glinted off the light shade of red its armor was composed of, and glittered off dangerous looking spiked claws. In its hands it held several more long spikes. A massive wingspan arched behind it.
"And so we finally meet," the creature spoke, affirming Tal's suspicions. "I have wanted this day to come."
"You are part of the remaining TA series, then?" Tal asked calmly.
"Indeed. Only four of us remain, brother." It's eyes tightened. "I intend to insure by today that there is only one."
"It seems that you cannot decide if you wish to work for Project Darklight or against it," Tal commented, flipping the caught spikes around his claws casually.
"No," his opponent hissed, "I care little for it. What I want to do now is prove my superiority! No longer will I be just a clone, I will be the master of the original!"
Tal merely raised an eyebrow.
"You, TA1, have always been the original model, the goal to which all of us have strived. But no more. I injected into my body all the genes from all the new models, of every variety. Because I survived, I have become the ultimate in our kind. I am no longer an insignificant duplicate of you, I have surpassed you! When your blood covers this floor I will have secured my place as TA0!"
"That is what you seek, is it?" Tal asked. Abruptly his wings seemed to explode from his back, arching massively on either side of him. In his hands the spikes snapped into splinters that rained to the floor. "Bring it on."
This story is really very close to its end…
