A/N: And now we get to our main story! A note about the continuity of this: It's not really anywhere real in the timeline of the games. Sorry if that bothers anyone! Like in Fusion, Adam is the ship's computer, but the ship looks and works like the one in Corruption (just for a visual), as that's my favorite ship of hers, and Samus has the usual Varia Suit. It also takes place almost immediately after Samus has defeated Ridley at an unspecified point. (That's the battle they're talkign about here, if you can't tell! :P) Now...read it and ejoy it, by command of the Supreme Empress! ~DG
chapter i: the soldier's request
Reconstruction complete.
Recovery successful.
Exiting stasis mode...
Samus opened her eyes slowly and pushed herself upright with one hand, holding her hair back with the other as she shook off the remnants of sleep. Welcome back, Lady, said the ship calmly. She wasn't quite sure when the computer had started talking, but it still threw her off to hear the familiar voice.
"Hi, Adam," she said vaguely, and sighed. She was still tired; weird dreams didn't make for good sleep, no matter how long you were in semistasis.
Are you feeling better? he asked.
"Yeah," she said as she pulled her hair up into a ponytail. Physically, she felt great-the reconstruction hadn't left any damage from the recent battle. Mentally, of course, was another question, but one she set aside for the moment. "Funny dreams, though," she added. The dream was already slipping away—all she could remember was someplace dark, and the feeling she was supposed to do something.
"Whatever," she said, looking up. "Anyways, where are we?"
Position: 205-193-87, he said, and displayed a map on the holograph above the controls. 54.22 Ls from the nearest GF flagship, 3.16 Lm from the location of the intersystem comference...and far away from the Space Pirates.
"That's great, thanks," she said, smiling a little. "Anything else I should know?"
Well, there were some space pirate ships not long ago—seven of them.
"And?" she asked, leaning forward slightly.
Cloaked! They didn't see us.
"Good work!" she said, pleased. Space pirate ships could have been nasty, especially taking the recent battle into consideration, but that danger had apparently been avoided.
The ship did take some damage, though, he added. We'll need repairs when you make a landing.
"No problem," she said, waving a hand. "Just remind me, alright?"
Done! he said. And...you have a message.
"Hm?" she asked, looking up again. The holograph displyed the words Message waiting. She frowned and tapped on the icon to play the message.
With a flicker, the image of a Federation soldier appeared. "Samus Aran," he said, and turned his head to look over his shoulder before looking back at her. "I don't have much time. The Space Pirates are after me. I need-" The message faded out, then reappeared. "-your help," the soldier finished. "Please, if you get this message, find me. If they catch me, it's over."
The holograph of the soldier turned suddenly, as if he'd heard a sound, before he reached out to shut off the recorder. The holograph vanished for a second, and then started over at the beginning, repeating the message.
"Do we know anything else?" she asked, staring up at the image.
The message was sent via an encrypted communications channel- Adam began.
"A GF channel?"
Of course. Also, a distress signal is attached, which contains coordinates.
"Right," she said slowly. "Do we have time?"
There are 81 hours until you have to report for the conference.
"That's plenty of time," she said, starting to smile. "After all, this shouldn't take too long."
Setting the course for those coordinates, Adam informed her.
"Let's go!" she said, and prepared the thrusters. The screen flashed READY, and she pushed the lever up, activating the jump engines. "After all," she added as the ship shot forward and into lightspeed, "fighting Space Pirates is my job!"
The ship dropped out of lightspeed twenty minutes later to enter the atmostphere of a ringed planet sparkling in the white-gold light of its star. This is Cloryss, Adam said helpfully. Twenty-five percent of the planet is ocean, twenty-five percent is forest, and the last fifty, is all city much like what's below us. It was a beautiful planet—even more stunning than Capitol, which was pretty impressive.
Samus activated her power suit and uploaded the coordinates as the gunship descended and a shining city unfolded below them. The wings folded down to land, and she heard the rear thrusters activate as the ship touched down on the platform.
She stood up and stepped backwards into the lift, which lowered her to the ground with a hiss. Good luck, Lady, said Adam over her communicator. She nodded and checked her location on the map. The position of the coordinates wasn't far away; this wouldn't take long.
The lucky thing was that, from what she could see, this looked like just the kind of city where seeing someone walk down the street in a full armor suit would be an everyday thing. That would make sense—after all, the trooper she was looking for had chosen it as a place to hide from the pirates. Naturally he would want ot be able to blend in.
She strode off confidently in the direction of the soldier's location, checking her own position once in a while to stay on track. This shouldn't be a difficult mission, but she couldn't help looking over her shoulder every few minutes.
Space pirate ships were sighted, she reminded herself. For all we know, they could have been after the same soldier I'm looking for—which means there could already be space pirates here.
She wouldn't mind a fight with a few pirates, actually, if it could only be that simple. There were just two problems with that: first, if more than one or two of those ships had come here, a few space pirates could very quickly become a lot of space pirates. Second, if they sent for reinforcements, more would swarm in like flies to honey. Their quarry and Samus Aran would be too good to resist.
Fortunately, she reached the place without incident. It looked like an apartment building—probably seven stories high, with balconies on every floor. Her first thought was that it didn't look like the sort of place one chose as a hiding place. Then she realized that was exactly what made it perfect, assuming you could get inside—it was the last place Space Pirates would think of searching.
There was no sign above the door of the apartment, just a scanner beside it for those who didn't have an energy cannon. She considered for a moment and decided to enter the polite way, without shooting the door. It hissed open the second she pressed her hand against the scanner, and she stepped inside. "Too easy," she murmured, grinning, and checked the map. It expanded to show the floors of the building, as well as the soldier's location on the fourth story.
The lift carried her up and stopped smoothly, the doors opening to let her out. She hesitated on the landing, unsure of what she was supposed to do. After a moment of hesitation, she just hammered on the door. "Anyone home?" she called loudly, hoping the soldier could hear her. "I got a message to come here."
The door opened to reveal her client, just like he had been in the holograph. Seeing him face-to-face, however, caught her off-guard, and it took her a minute to realize it was because of his height. He was clearly human, but he stood easily as tall as she was—taller, perhaps, even if the suit did add to his height. That wasn't something that happened every day.
"Samus Aran," he said, sounding relieved. "Come in."
The door closed behind her as she followed him into the apartment. "What is this place?" she asked curiously, looking around at the glowing glass scultures around the room.
"Mine, for now," he said coolly. "Whoever lives here went on vacation and left the balcony door unbarred." He sat down in a chair. "It wasn't hard to get in."
"So you're living in someone else's apartment while pirates are chasing you?" she repeated, and sat down across the table from him..
"Look, I don't exactly like it," he said, a little defensively. "I wouldn't be doing it if I had any choice, but I don't."
"Okay," she said quickly, raising her hands. "I'm not attacking you. I was just wondering."
He hesitated for a moment, his shoulders still raised and his fists clenched, before he nodded, relaxing. She blinked, a frown flickering across her face; for a second, he'd reminded her of something, but it was no more than a vague feeling, and it was gone before she could work out what it had been.
"Before I agree to help you, I would like to clarify a few things," she added. "For one thing, what is it you did to make the space pirates hunt you down with enough determination to need my help?"
He didn't answer for a moment, and she felt a flicker of uncertainty. She hadn't been exactly nice—after all, she was a hunter, she wasn't supposed to be nice—but she hadn't wanted to offend him, either. After a few seconds of silence, though, he replied, "I started thinking, for a start."
"Started—wait." She frowned. "I don't understand."
"Catch," he said, reaching up to pull off his helmet. She held up her hands to catch it, but when he took the helmet off, she was so surprised she almost missed anyways.
The soldier had no head.
"Hey, look," said his voice, but it was still coming from the helmet. She looked down at it to see the inside was lined with electronics.
"Oh," she said, and paused. "I'm still not sure what this has to do with space pirates."
"I'm—or I was—an experiment," he said, a hint of anger in his voice. "They wired up the inside of a Federation suit as a robot, and ran the processes through a memory chip that's in all the suits."
"Right," she said, starting to work it out on her own now. "But the experiment failed—there's still some of the soldier left in you're memory chip. You're really a copy of the former trooper, yes? You had to get away from the pirates—they wanted you to fight the Federation, but that's where your loyalty still lies."
"Exactly," he agreed. "Of course, they couldn't let me get away with that, even if I hadn't hijacked one of their ships to escape. They chased me, and we ended up here."
"And you contacted me," she said, and got up to give him his head back. "Of course—I'm their worst enemy. You already knew that—every soldier knows of me, even if they don't know me. Sorry, I'm not trying to sound full of myself, it's just true. You must know that."
"Yeah, but there's another problem," he said. "They didn't completely forget about the soldier inside the chip. I have his personality—whoever he was—but none of the memories. I need to get away from the space pirates, yes—but if there's any way for it to be done, I also need to have the limiter removed from my memory chip."
She stood up, thinking. "That is more of a problem," she said. "And it definitely seems like you need some long-term protection from the space pirates. That wouldn't make a difference, ordinarily, but I need to report at an intersystem conference. I've been assigned to protect the leaders involved, which, from what I've heard, might be quite the task."
"It does sound like just the sort of thing the space pirates would love to crash," he agreed darkly.
"Exactly." She turned to look out the window. "I have some time before I need to report, so we have options—I could take you to a Federation ship, they'd protect you there and you might find someone able to get your memories back to you. Unless-"
Even in her head, she didn't even get a chance to follow that thought through to its conclusion, because just then the door hissed open and a half a dozen space pirates ran into the room, their weapons already firing at both Samus and the robot soldier.
Samus brought two of them down with a few good shots, and the suit/trooper took another one out. It didn't look like this was going to be so hard after all, except that the three remaining pirates were bigger and more heavily armored. And as if that weren't bad enough, the door had opened again as another handful of them spilled out of the lift and into the apartment.
"Heads up!" shouted the soldier, and fired right over her head. She turned to see an aerotrooper on the balcony. It flew back as the blast struck it, but it recovered quickly and swooped into the apartment, followed by two others of its kind.
She ducked to avoid a stream of fire aimed for her head. Another pirate hit her from behind while she was still off-blanace, and she went sprawling. A burst of energy shot over her. She heard the shriek of a space pirate dying. Smiling grimly behind her visor, she scrambled to her feet and rejoined the fray.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the soldier step back to fire at one of the pirates. He was good; even she couldn't deny that. Maybe a little foolhardy, but brave, unlike most of the pathetic troopers in the GF Marines. Shame he was probably dead.
Of course, she thought as she turned to blast a pirate behind him, there was a reason most feds preferred to stay behind any cover available.
"Thanks," he called. She didn't have time to respond. A pirate charged at her, its weapon blazing. She leaped to the side, still firing back. It staggered and fell, but got to its feet again. She charged her cannon and released a huge blast of energy straight at the pirate's chest. This time, it didn't get up.
The space pirates drove her towards the center of the room, despite her efforts to hold her ground, until she found herself back-to-back with Mal. "You didn't mention-" she began, and paused to take a clear shot at one of the pirates. "That there were so many!" she finished, and kicked at a pirate who got too close.
"Sorry," he said, and swung around to take out an aerotrooper's jets. The pirate screamed as its damaged flight system sent it spiraling out of control. "I didn't know—get down!"
Some subconscious part of her reacted, and she dove to the ground. Something hit her, shorting out her visor for a minute. Something exploded beside her, and even through her suit she could feel the heat. A space pirate hissed, but the sound became a screech. There was the sound of more firing, and a shout of pain.
Her vision returned the next second, and she saw the soldier hit the ground hard. Her irritation at the attack flared into anger, and she scrambled to her feet. This had gone on too long.
Space pirates fell like a row of toy soldiers as she fired one missile after another. Beside her, the soldier was getting up again. The last remaining aerotrooper dove at her, its engines flaming. A rocket exploded in its face, sending it flying in the other direction. She and the soldier turned together to find one pirate left. It fired two shots, and then gave up. The last missile hit its mark, and the pirate fell.
"You alright?" she asked, turning to the soldier.
"Considering the circumstances, I think so," he said, sounding exhausted.
She sighed and removed her helmet to push her hair out of her face. "Good enough, I guess," she said. "Anyways, I'm changing the plan. You're coming with me to the conference."
"Um, okay," he said. "May I ask why?"
"That was way too many troopers to send after just any escaped experiment," she said, frowning. "There's something special about you, sir, and until I figure out exactly what it is, I want to keep you where I can see you."
He saluted. "Whatever you say, Miss Aran."
"Miss Aran?" She laughed bitterly. "No one's called me that for a long time. It's just Samus."
"Sorry. I'll keep it in mind."
"Good." She reactivated her helmet and turned towards him. "Now, let's get back to my ship. I think the faster we get out of here, the better. After all, we don't want to be here if any more of them show up."