Metroid Prime: Renegade
Part II
Chapter 8
Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.
The world swam confusedly around Unaii. His lungs expanded and contracted at an alarming rate, seeking not oxygen but asylum from the heat of the core that had invaded his body. Deprived of sweat glands, his exhalations were the only avenue of escape for the excess heat in his Zebesian body. Each breath collected oxygen and a pain that plummeted down his fragile spine. The rims of blackness spread past the edges of his vision.
Slow down.
Her eyes had burned like two stars. Her heat had filled his body like this.
Kan-Lana...
And now, he had avenged her.
Unaii would have liked tangible evidence. He would have liked a body. But that was impossible. He had researched the Hunter's power suit, and the heat of the warp core had doubtlessly incinerated it along with the fragile human female inside. Time and time again, he had envisioned a different confrontation time -- something more drawn out out and excruciating -- but this would have to do. His part in her undoing had been direct enough to sate his thirst for blood, and in his satisfaction he now found himself in an odd state of carefree euphoria despite his unpromising future.
Surely, Re-Kuluk's forces would find him here. Surely, his antics had pushed Re-Kuluk far beyond the surzak's already slim capacity for mercy. But he wouldn't fight. He didn't need to. With the death of the bounty hunter, it seemed cosmologically reasonable to him that he should perish in turn.
"You lose, Aran," he coughed. "You lose."
--
Near one star in a galaxy of billions, in a universe with billions of galaxy, a lone woman floated in space.
Truly alone.
She could not admire the picturesque view splayed out all around her. For her, there were no stars. Only focus.
Focus.
But how could focus in such boundlessly frustrating existence? How could she think of nothing when the universe sparkled angrily at her every side, burned with the shades of strife and competition and war? Even if that blasted Unaii had perished back there, his hate would live on in every Zebesian and in every human. All around her it beat and breathed as if vital to life. There was no escape from it. If somehow she survived this, hate would continue to permeate her existence -- sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, but always present.
Indeed, it seemed even to live even in the vacuum of space that eyed her hungrily now. Her suit flickered. Some part of her wanted to let go. It wouldn't matter. In all of the thousands of stars in known space, there had been one place she could call home, a harsh but beautiful place. So beautiful that the Space Pirates had raped it. So beautiful that she had destroyed it.
Somewhere, the shards of that place floated in space, broken and isolated, like she did now. Just a piece of frozen planetary dust, meaningless to the vast vast cosmic continuum.
Alone. Truly alone.
Fatigue settled down on her now. She had not the heart to resist it. Whatever absurd, enigmatic motivation to live preserved her focus, it could not defy the sheer reality of the situation. Each breath taxed the finite energy reserve of her suit. Death was a factor only of time. Her will to live, however mild, had nothing to do with it.
She felt herself succumbing to the inevitable. Her suit flickered dangerously. She recalled something the Chozo had taught her about the effects of a vacuum on organisms. First, the lack of pressure would boil her blood. Then, the lack of heat would freeze her flesh. In space, she would perish faster than her neurological signals could reach her brain.
Absolute peace with no price attached -- a bargain she perhaps would never find again. Not with her warlike profession.
The suit flickered. It flickered again. She felt her eyes tear up, mourning the friends and the love she had never found.
No. She was the hunter, a voice told her. She had traveled to every corner of the known galaxy and beyond, it reasoned. How could this possibly defeat her? Send out a distress signal to somebody -- anybody, it told her. She could hold out for days if she needed to, it explained.
But hopelessness killed even that voice. It drained the Chozo blood from her veins.
And she was now truly, utterly alone.
The suit flickered again. This was it, she told herself despite the protests shooting from every corner of her trembling body. It's going to be okay. Just let go. Let go. Let go!
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, a fleet of a dozen warships had appeared before her.
--
Admiral Petronus peered out at the smoldering warp core.
Damn it. She knew what this meant.
"Admiral, the ejected warp core has blocked warp signatures. We cannot track them."
The admiral was silent. Re-Kuluk must have been crazy to pull a stunt like this. Eject a whole warp core just to mask his warp signature and elude her fleet?
She turned to her first officer, Benson Torus. "Send probes and ships out to all adjacent sectors," she said softly. "Scan for residual warp fields."
Torus nodded. The task would take an absurdly long time -- at least a week, by which time the Zebesians perhaps would set to work more soundly covering their tracks. But it was the only option the fleet had, and he did not want to cross with Petronus. She could silence him with a few well-placed words.
A blip on a screen immediately caught Petronus' eye. "Ensign, you have found lifesigns."
"Ye-yes, admiral," the ensign stammered, embarrassed that Petronus had somehow noticed before he did. "One humanoid in the emptiness of space near the core. It must have some kind of biosuit."
"Send a probe to retrieve our friend," Petronus said. "I want all nine security squads to be dispatched to the probe bay."
"What's the threat?"
"Confidential," Petronus said bluntly.
"Forget I asked," Torus muttered.
Petronus ignored him. She had better things to do than to put Torus in his place. Besides, the unruly man -- clearly too young for a first officer -- was only looking to assert himself. Her passivity kept him in check better than any bombastic reprimand would.
For a moment, the fact that her inactivity had, in itself, become her psychological weapon against her officers amused her, but her amusement melted away as she turned her thoughts to her newest affair.
The most wanted outlaw -- aboard her ship!
The danger thrilled her. Her superiors would drool when she delivered the most wanted assassin in the galaxy straight to their fidgeting fingers.
Her Zebesian superiors, she noted with a wry smile, would literally drool.
"Tell the rest of the fleet to search the area," she said.
"And us?" Torus said.
"Plot a course for Kratosa Prime. We're going home."
--
"You bastard!"
Unaii blinked.
"You fool!" Re-Kuluk raged, slamming his claw on the table. "You are an insult to our kind!" he spat at Unaii. "And you have doomed us all!"
But Unaii wasn't watching him. He absentmindedly watched the streams of starlight flow past the ship as it cut through space-time.
This infuriated Re-Kuluk even more, and he reached over the table and engulfed Unaii in the massive claw, lifting Unaii clean off the floor.
Unaii did not even flinch as rough ends of the appendage bit into this throat.
His rage fueled by Unaii's unreactiveness, Re-Kuluk roared and threw Unaii into a wall.
"Do you care nothing for what you have done?" the surzak cried, lifting the large metal table and hurling it at Unaii.
Unaii lifted an arm to protect himself, but his appendages had been removed. The table painfully rebounded off him and tumbled to the side.
"The Hunter is dead," Unaii muttered. "My life is complete. I care for nothing."
And again, Re-Kuluk caught Unaii between his claws.
Re-Kuluk brought his face close to Unaii. His heavy breathing sent spittle out of his mouth.
"A twitch is all it would take," Re-Kuluk whispered manically. Images of Unaii's severed head rolling across the floor sent shivers of pleasure up his long Zebesian spine.
Silence.
"But my sister would not approve," he said, tearing his claw from Unaii, who toppled to the ground clutching his bloodied throat.
"Don't...be ridiculous," Unaii sputtered. "What do...you...care? No, you need me for something."
"You are a worthless fool!" he said, beginning to stomp on Unaii's spine.
Unaii rolled over, and Re-Kuluk began smashing his gut. "Don't you think," Re-Kuluk growled. "Don't you think -- she was my damned sister, Unaii!"
"What...are you...saying?" Unaii sputtered out as Re-Kuluk's boot repeatedly smashed him.
"I'm saying that you are not the only one -- forget it!" he screamed. Suddenly, he stopped and began pacing the room.
Unaii groaned, which earned him another kick from Re-Kuluk.
"You're right," Re-Kuluk said softly, his boot hovering inches above Unaii's mottled face. "I do need you."
"For?"
But the reemergence of Unaii's voice from the crumpled mass that he was ruined Re-Kuluk's composure.
"I need you to find me a damned bounty hunter!" he screamed as he stomped down, sending Unaii far from consciousness.
--
They were all Federation ships, Samus noted. But her relief was cut short. The last time she had seen "Federation" ships -- it had been perhaps forty hours ago -- they had tried to kill her.
One of the ships dispatched a shadowed object that approached her. Dozens of antennas sprung from the spherical object. The probe stopped short just in front of her. She raised her sore cannon arm pathetically, knowing she lacked the firepower to fight the robot, which was half the size her ship had been.
A hatch opened and the probe moved into her, consuming her. She found herself floating in the center of a compartment the size of a coffin. The hatch closed at her feet, shutting out the starlight. The compartment hissed as the computer pressurized it and filled it with air.
When it stopped, her last reserves of mental energy escaped her. The power suit dissolved away and she lost focus and consciousness.
--
When Samus woke again, her aches had dulled. She breathed more easily and saw more clearly.
The experiences flashed through her mind again. First, fighting two interceptors and a half-crazed Zebesian. Then, being taken into the Space Pirate destroyer under the suspicious pretense of peace, only to find her within the claws of the captain himself. Then, sabotaging the destroyer's warp engine, narrowly dodging an enigmatically powerful bolt of energy, and plummeting down a warp conduit before being blasted into space.
Not to mention suffocating to death, albeit only for a minute, when the warp core heat had overtaxed her power suit.
Now reinvigorated, her senselessness during the episode seemed little more than a silly dream. Why did she hesitate to kill Re-Kuluk in the Apocalypse Room only to go on a killing rampage after she woke up in the destroyer's medical bay? And, floating in space a few moments ago to her, how had she become so hopeless and woeful?
But even now, she felt a piece of that emptiness with her. She had a feeling it would not go away soon -- that years of chaos and confusion had cultivated it. That wound would not heal anytime soon, she knew.
She made a promise to herself. Whatever situation she was now in, she would take a vacation after escaping it. A long vacation.
But first, she had to find out where the hell she was, and what the hell all of this business about the so-called "Republic" was all about.
"I see you have awaken."
Samus turned her head to see a woman loom over her. The white stripe of an admiral streaked down her vest. The woman's slim, punitive frame and apparent youthfulness did not divert from the look of absolute confidence in her dark eyes.
Samus hopped from the bed and looked down upon the shorter woman.
"You are?" Samus said, glad to hear her own voice, once again robust.
The woman answered immediately. "Admiral Petronus. Fleet Alpha. The Galactic Republic."
Samus said nothing. Petronus studied her carefully, as if the bounty hunter was a puzzle waiting to be solved. "And you are Sam--"
"The last time I encountered the Republic," Samus interrupted, "its interceptors blew my ship to dust."
"You are a killer and a thief, Aran. Did you expect a warm welcome?"
Samus drew close to Petronus' face. Very close.
"The only things I've killed are space critters and Space Pirates. A lot of space critters and Space Pirates."
"The Space Pirates you so carelessly destroyed were sentient beings, with families and lives much like our own."
Samus' eyes flicked. Petronus' brightened.
"Yeah, and I killed them to protect families and lives like your own," Samus said.
"Thereby inciting only further violence," Petronus retorted. "Hardly a perceptive strategy."
"Have you fought a Space Pirate, admiral?" Samus hissed, putting the emphasis on the woman's title.
Petronus' jaw tightened. She had not.
Samus continued. "Perhaps you would think differently if you saw them chop your loved ones to pieces."
"The violence is over, now," Petronus hissed. "You are a relic of a past age. The Zebesians have successfully assimilated into the new Republic."
"Then why I am a criminal?"
"It is not that you deserve judgment. But you inspire both awe and pure contempt among the Zebesians. They demand your death."
"So it is out of practicality, not righteousness, that you send a woman to prison? Because I pissed off a bunch of Space Pirates? And you talk about ethics. You talk about a past age. Well, let's talk about this," Samus said. The bounty hunter drew close. "I just came awfully close of turning a Space Pirate destroyer into a cloud of cosmic dust," she whispered. "And I'm not fond of being caged."
"I have nine security teams guarding this medical bay around the clock, and you've never killed your own kind."
Samus scowled. "My own kind has never been my enemy," she said. "And if you've done your reading you'll notice I've never been too chummy with my own species."
"I can see why," Petronus muttered. The admiral swallowed and looked cautiously around her. "Look, as a gesture of good will, I will consult my superiors and petition for your release. Until then, I'm only following orders."
Then, she turned briskly and strode out of the room.
Samus, left alone, smirked sorrowfully. Good will? Petronus was just protecting her own men from a merciless killer.
The admiral was right to be afraid.
--
The medical bay doors hissed shut behind Petronus.
"Fool," she muttered, walking through lines of standing guards.
Aran's poor attempt at intimidation had been laughable. This would be all too easy.
Because the bounty hunter's heart beat with the blood of a warrior. And warriors saw things in black and white. Violence was their only purpose and their only method. Like all warriors, Aran was meant to be nothing more than a pawn in a cosmic game played by intellectuals.
And Petronus would use her new pawn well. Very well.
Suddenly she stopped and turned to the nearest guard. "Kill her if you see her," she said, loudly enough so the other officers could hear. "Hesitation may cost you your life."
It didn't hurt to be cautious.