(Message received) (Location: Rayta Quadrant – Service Station RY419)
(Sender: Officer Leon Peters LP02)
(Priority: Vital)
(Quick transcription: Decoding + Complete)
(Message begins: Attention Agent Hayes, we have received you----ssage ---u---r-n is o----r way. Wh--------r----s, you mu----vacuate -he pla-------mediatel----u are i---reat dang----s long as yo---re there. evacu-te im--diately :Message Ends)

Nat Hayes looked at the message his transceiver had picked up. From this range, he was surprised he could even get a message to civilisation, let alone receive a reply. They must have been really desperate to get this message to him, it had been sent before it was fully transcribed. He wondered who they had sent, and why they needed to evacuate immediately. Surely they could have sent a squad capable of subduing the burrowers?

Then he thought of the Metroid, bright silver, lightning-quick. He shuddered and set off again, eagerly awaiting any assistance from the Federation.

Samus walked through the caves cautiously, taking in her surroundings and occasionally glancing at her radar. These were strange tunnels, almost perfectly cylindrical. After all of the Chozo architecture she had seen on her travels, it was a little strange to be on a planet completely devoid of intelligent life.

Except for…

If there was a Metroid here, she promised herself, she would keep it out of the attention of the Galactic Federation. Too many times they had insisted on performing research and experiments on Metroid samples and every test had ended in another failure, let alone another attack by the space pirates. Of course she wouldn't be able to let it go free, she figured she'd deal with that problem when she got to it.

The bounty hunter was snapped out of her reverie by a faint noise. It was only on the edge of hearing but her trained and experienced senses could pick it up. It sounded like…

"Digging?" Samus frowned as the words on the message screen flickered across her memory. She armed her blaster and proceeded cautiously through the tunnels. The sound was definitely coming from ahead of her and, more worryingly, slowly getting louder and nearer as she walked forward. She switched to her infra-red vision and, sure enough, there were several faint orange glows a short distance ahead and getting nearer.

Some kind of burrowing beetle, she thought, they must have made all these tunnels. Well I should know how to deal with these after Tallon IV and Aether.

Setting herself, Samus aimed her blaster at the wall in front of her and walked slowly along the tunnel. Before long, the sounds became louder and more noticeable until, suddenly, the wall in front of her exploded in shower of rock and soil. The bounty hunter began firing immediately and was rewarded with several shrill cries as the beam burned through the shells of the beetles.

Simple, thought Samus as she looked down the hole at the charred bodies of her enemies.

Suddenly, with a crash, the wall behind her was ripped asunder as more armoured claws tore through the stone like it was paper. Instinctively, Samus rolled to her right, turned, and let off a missile. The explosion collapsed most of the cave wall, crushing the creatures but also blocking off the tunnel behind her.

"Perfect", she thought. "I guess I'll be here for a while"

He could hear them now, closing in on him quickly. There seemed to be no way of escaping from them. Agent Hayes wondered if he was going to have to make a famous last stand. Except that out here in the back end of nowhere, there would be nobody to remember him.

I don't want to die like this. He thought. All alone, light years from home, forgotten…

He looked at the garbled message again, had they sent help? He couldn't make out what the message said other than to evacuate immediately, and he couldn't do that unless he had a working ship. The federation agent was snapped out of his reverie by the sound of gunfire, distant, but unmistakeable. Hope rose in his heart at the thought of escaping, and he started to run when he realised that the creatures in the stone all around him were all travelling that way as well. Cursing, Nat Hayes drew his weapon and hurried towards the source of the noise.

Samus was having difficulty with the tunnel, the explosions from her missiles had made cracks in the stone all around her and some parts of the cavern roof were already giving way. Almost crawling through the small gap left by one such collapse she heard the noises again, the burrowers were back.

After forcing herself out of the rubble and back onto her feet, she was thrown off balance by the eruption of rock beneath her as the first burrower broke through the tunnel floor. It was immediately fried by a blast from the bounty hunter's Chozo-crafted arm cannon.

Samus, however, was already stumbling backwards from the initial impact and when another burrower flew out of the side wall she toppled onto her back. In a heartbeat, the beetle-like creature was upon her, the ferocious jaws darted at her visor. With lightning reflexes she spun herself onto her front, throwing the visceral alien into the wall, and incinerated it with her cannon.

She had no time to rest however, and as she jumped to her feet there were another two crashes and another two burrowers dropped from the roof and leapt for her face. One was caught by the cannon but the other managed to grip her shoulder with its prehensile jaws, as yet another burst from the cavern floor.

Samus flung herself into the wall, knocking the creature off her armour and dodging the other one as it lunged for her throat. She killed the one at her feet with a quick shot from her cannon then aimed at the other one only to see its back end disappearing into the stone as it dug through the hard rock with frightening speed.

Nat Hayes rounded the last corner and saw his salvation ahead of him. It was Samus Aran! And she was fighting off the monsters with consummate ease. The agent watched in awe as she finished off the last few monsters then began to shout a greeting.

The cry died in his throat and his blood turned cold as the pale form floated past him.

Wondering what the burrower had fled from, the bounty hunter turned and stopped dead, staring at the ghostly image in front of her.

Metroid…