4.4 – Made sure the different sections are distinct. For some reason, they weren't spaced apart in the original. Anyway, thanks for reading!
Metroid Prime: Renegade
Chapter 7
The blast from Unaii's cannon threw some of Re-Kuluk's commandos to the wall and completely incinerated two others. Before the dust could even ascend, a snake of energy pounced on him, and he suddenly was pulled helplessly forward as if he was attached to an unyielding rope. In the next second, he found himself hanging over the void, clutching the railing for all of his life.
He peered down.
Samus hung several feet below him, her flickering energy grapple the only link withholding her fatal descent.
Unaii cursed. With both his hands covered in attachments, his only link was a claw pinching the bridge. Even with his Zebesian strength, he could not possibly lift himself with the hefty bounty hunter. His hand trembled as it tried to sustain the pinch.
"I cannot hold us forever, Hunter," he hissed down to her.
"I know," she said. She yanked down hard on the coil. Unaii felt himself torn from the railing.
The world rushed past him.
--
Samus, wrapped tightly around the warp prism, leaned to the side to avoid Unaii as he fell--but she had inadvertently yanked him not just down but toward her. The mass of the plummeting Zebesian smashed into her, tearing her arm from the warp prism and sending them both down.
Down.
Samus' stomach lunged as it tried to keep up with her descending body. Interconnected confusedly, the artificial gravity pulled them towards the bright, hot light of their deaths.
In horror, she realized that a few seconds would not be enough time to escape her fate.
--
The bolts of Re-Kuluk's forces smacked into the clouds of dust that Unaii's weapon--whatever the Hell it was--had created. Re-Kuluk thought he envisioned a nondescript mass shooting through the air but assumed it to be some trick created by the fusillade of energy bolts.
Wait. It was not some trick.
"Hold you fire!" he barked to his commandos, as he hurried to the bridge. He leapt down to grab the dangling Zebesian. Too late.
"Lord, the ship—"
"Shut up," the surzak snarled, picking himself up and peering over the railing. The silhouettes of two bodies shrunk as Unaii and Samus fell deeper into the ship's bowels, where the warp prism piped superluminal fluid to the ship's fiery core—even Samus' highly resistant biosuit would not be able to withstand the antimatter inferno.
But it could withstand the vacuum of space.
He could save his ship and his plans.
"Eject the core!" he barked to somebody—anybody. "Now!"
A perturbing thought occurred to him.
"Die well, Unaii," he breathed.
--
A terrible white light stormed through Samus' visor. She reached for the warp prism--a blur of colors--but she was falling too fast to take a hold of it. The shot her grapple hook at the walls of the conduit--to grab something, anything, or at least slow her descent. The motion managed to dislodge Unaii from her, but it was fruitless and slowing her descent. As her final act, she activated her gravity boots out of the slim hope that the magnetism of the ship would overcome its artificial gravity. No luck.
The light was upon her, then, and a terrible heat seeped through her suit. She felt her energy--already depleted from Unaii's assault--draining at a fast rate. She was screaming, burning alive in her suit. She was a little girl again, being assaulted by a storm because she was too weak. This time, the storm was killing her. They had infused her with their blood. They had given her the suit. It still was killing her. Bright, searing, it was blinding her, biting her, kicking her, and when she tried to escape it was hunting her down to pommel her harder.
And then, there was blackness.
--
A bounty hunter floated in space. Life, the scans reported.
Re-Kuluk had been too late.
The Zebesian slammed his fist into the wall with enough force to rack his spine. "What do you mean, no life signs?"
"This is what the scans indicate."
Re-Kuluk snarled, striking the ensign in the jaw and striding off to the window, pressing his face against the glass. The scarlet illumination of the bridge fueled his rage. His plans had burned up in that core with that weakling of a human. If only he could personally dismember that half-crazed Zebesian that started this all! Unaii could have been so much more, like he had been but a few years ago, than the nuisance he became.
The stars stared back at Re-Kuluk tiredly. Somewhere out there, his people had been born. Though divided by their clanships, they had somehow carved out a unified destiny. What twist of space and time attached so much blind aggression, so much bloodthirstiness to that destiny? Re-Kuluk's religion did not have room for destiny. The sacred texts dictated that the future was only the perception of the Zebesians, and it was therefore entirely in their hands. But maybe there was something genetic, something that predisposed them to such xenophobia.
Unaii had been different, though. If there had been some genetic predisposition, he had managed to transcend it. The scientist had possessed a vision--ridiculous, yes, but capable of stirring the hearts of the warriors, many of whom had not realized they had hearts that could be stirred. A vision that there could be cities where there were bases. That there could be merchant convoys were there were hives of destroyers and interceptors. That they would be space explorers, space diplomats, instead of the thieving, sniveling race of zealous Phazon addicts free from any inkling of concern for their common future. He wanted to lash out at his officers, scuttling as they were to assemble a new warp core. Even Unaii had fallen from this dream in the end, revealing himself to be no better than the rest.
Had Unaii ever been intrinsically different, Re-Kuluk wondered desperately, or had he suspended his own nature with more proficiency? Memories flipped through his mind. He remembered sitting with Unaii's chambers on Zebes, before research facility had been obliterated by Samus Aran.
"Lord Sin-Unaii, I require assistance," Re-Kuluk remembered saying.
"Of what sort?"
"Humans. They are vicious and attack my women and children relentlessly. My warriors are too few."
"Perhaps if you would not also target their women and children, you would not invoke their wrath."
"I do not know what you mean, surzak."
"Lord, let me tell you how I came to that title. But two years ago I was a Zebesian of science, working within the weapons facilities for Sin-Tuluk. Perhaps you remember him. He had a reputation of aggressiveness on par with Lord Rid-Ley."
"I do indeed."
"Good, you would do well to remember him then. His constant assaults against the Federation incited several systematic retaliations. My people, though they are a faithful people, grew restless. His foolery brought many of them to an early death. So I took him down."
Re-Kuluk saw Unaii's point and his spine tingled at the thought of a restless warrior of his clan challenging him. "But if we do not strike first," Re-Kuluk reasoned, drawing on the militaristic knowledge he had inherited from his father, "They will take the initiative."
"With faith, Lord of the Kan, your understanding of the Federation is lacking. It is like a wild beast. The beast does not conquer. If it has what it needs, it will be tranquil. But provoke it, and you will meet all the gods of Hell upon your bridge."
"So you offer no help?"
"Your people are welcome to seek refuge here. That is all the help I offer."
Re-Kuluk scowled.
"I expected support, surzak, not sanctuary."
"Sanctuary is all I have to offer. My people are no longer the barbarians they once were. No, they are scientists. Already we are deciphering the secrets of an organism known as the Metroid."
"So you will hide within your holes, dissecting vermin for all eternity."
"To dodge the beast's bite, yes."
Re-Kuluk trembled to keep his anger in check. This Zebes facility, he fantasized, would make a charming addition to his own territorial repertoire. He spun abruptly and began storming out of the room, but Unaii began saying something behind him that froze his long gait.
"Consider my offer, Kan-Kuluk. We all could learn something from that beast."
Re-Kuluk cocked his head a little. Then, he left.
Back on the bridge years later, Re-Kuluk had lost himself in his memories. Yes, he had been known by Kan-Kuluk then, surzak of the Kan clan just as Unaii was surzak of the Sin clan, but where Unaii had forsaken his role to hunt down Samus, Re-Kuluk had been ousted by one of his own. That had been much later, though, when the formation of the Republic had begun.
When Re-Kuluk stepped out of his ship, he recalled in a related memory, Unaii was there. Re-Kuluk thought he would simply gloat. "Kan Kuluk, you have made a wise decision. Few surzaks would be so humble."
Re-Kuluk glanced around him in the shuttle bay, where scores of ships were unloading their cargo. "Humility is not a virtue our people appraise well. Humility does not hold out against a horde of Federation starships." He said, recent events still very real in his mind. The Federation attacks had escalated terribly, and in his hesitation he had compromised the faith of his people.
"You will soon find," started Unaii, bringing Re-Kuluk back into the immediate dialogue, "that the appraisals of my brethren here differ from those of their brothers on other worlds."
"I hope my own brethren are not too perturbed by your people's eccentricities," Re-Kuluk hissed. Unaii discerned his message well enough. The clan of Re was a formidable force. Re-Kuluk, as a surzak with a greater reputation and a more powerful force at his back, could perhaps take the colony with only moderate difficulty.
"You would do well to hope," Unaii hissed, his eyes easily meeting Re-Kuluk's glare. Unaii may have been a peaceful Zebesian—and a rarity at that—but he also knew that sometimes a little backbone must be shown in order to preserve that peace.
"Still your fear, brother," said a voice from behind them. "Your hostility makes for a crude alliance." said a voice from behind them. A Zebesian descended the docking ramp of Re-Kuluk's ship behind him.
"This is my sister, Kan-Lana" said Re-Kuluk, then huddled in closer to Unaii. "She can be a little blunt," he whispered.
Unaii was a surzak and was usually more concerned with gaining allies than finding mates. The transient, hedonistic nature of Zebesian sexual relationships offered little distraction to his far more important duties.
But this one caught more than a passing glance.
Her eyes, he noted, burned like two stars.
--
The silence shattered; the blackness fractured. There were stars--stars all around her. To one side, the massive hulk of the destroyer loomed. To the other, its warp core burned brightly like a white dwarf.
Samus was not dead. But it was close enough. Her suit was critically low on energy, expending its last just to revive her. It flickered a little, and in the same second that she realized that she yet lived, she feared that her suit would fail her and the vacuum would tear her apart, the lack of pressure and the lack of heat simultaneously boiling her and freezing her.
Her concentration meant the difference between life and death. A slip of the mind--a spike of anxiety, a spontaneous distraction, one more wave of the despair that had come to define her life--would end everything. End the childhood with the Chozo. End the relentless pursuit of revenge. End the murders of her parents. End the otherwise endless torment. Had she killed enough? Had she enacted enough revenge for the universe to resume balance? Or had she only tipped the scale further? She smothered such thoughts for her life.
Floating in oblivion, the lone woman meditated.