KNP: See the bottom of my profile for a response to your questions.
To all readers: The next chapters will be darker then the previous ones. For I warn you, it must get worse before it can become better.
Chapter 9: The Crash
Running at full speed, Samus came charging out onto dock M. Her body was covered in sweat, most of it from anger and fright instead of exertion. Her halter top dress held her chest loosely and the hair Sonilla had worked so hard on had fallen apart.
She could see her huntership. Creto had activated it and opened the loading hatch. It released from the dock and hovered just over the ground, waiting for a command.
Samus looked behind her and saw Maelos was almost out of the tunnel. He was half running with, half carrying Sonilla, who, even in her darkest hour, had sensed their situation and was attempting to escape too.
But her strength failed and she fell into a crumpled pile, dragging Maelos down with her. Behind them, nearly very available GF soldier was hurrying through the tunnel towards them. The wave EMP's affects were over. The soldiers had been ordered to kill and were only waiting for an open shot.
"Get up!" cried Maelos desperately. He tried to lift her up, but the troopers were coming and he knew they had little time.
"Bring the ship forward," Samus commanded Creto through the transmitter. She then turned and ran to her fallen friends. She came from one side, looking to help, while dozens of rifles came from the other side, bearing only death.
Without warning, Sonilla gagged and then vomited onto the concrete dock floor. Maelos tried to hold her steady as her body went into a violent fit of dry heaves, but at the same time noticed that the fluids on the floor were red-orange with blood. Samus finally reached them just as Sonilla's eyes rolled back and she passed out.
"Creto, get over here!" Samus shouted into the transmitter. The ship was almost to them.
The soldiers had cleared the tunnel. All the other guests had fled already so there was nothing to hide the three fugitives. We're sitting ducks, Samus thought.
The regiment's captain halted and raised his arm. His troops stopped, knelt, and then found a target through their scopes. There was a second in which the line of soldiers looked like perfect statues, then the captain dropped his arm, and they opened fire.
Samus was thrown off her feet as the volley of energy shots collided with her ship's frontal shield. Like a clap of thunder, they exploded in a burst of radiant colors, each blast causing a ripple in the shield. The force of the bombardment slid Maelos and Sonilla several feet back along the concrete as he continued to hold her still.
The sound was deafening while Samus and Maelos carried Sonilla's unconscious body up the loading ramp. The hatch closed and the ship began to gain altitude.
"Buckle her up," Samus told Maelos as she ran past them to the cockpit.
Strapping herself in as quickly as possible, Samus entered a series of vocal and button oriented commands. She put full shielding power to the rear and shifted the ship into full speed.
They burst through the glass case that was around the dock to hold in oxygen. The hole they left in it no doubt created a vacuum, which harmed the soldiers, but Samus didn't look back and most certainly didn't care.
"Give me the coordinates to the closest asteroid field or multi-mooned planet," she told Creto.
"Asteroid field?" questioned Maelos. He had placed Sonilla in a seat and was trying to buckle the harness.
"Yeah, to lose the---" Samus's reply was cut short by a blast that flipped the ship over on its side and made the lights flicker. Maelos tumbled to the ceiling and along the wall to come crashing down on the floor as the ship rolled over. Luckily, he had managed to get Sonilla's arms into the harness and that prevented her from the same bruising fate.
"--battleships."
More blasts were headed their way but this time Samus managed to avoid them. Maelos crawled to Sonilla and finally strapped her in. Then he pulled himself into the seat next to her and fumbled with his own buckle.
"Got it," he groaned when he'd finished. He really didn't want a fall like that again.
"5.3 points north is asteroid field Y654. 2:16 minutes until we reach it," Creto said.
A quintet of Federation class J battleships were baring down on them. Samus's ship was small enough, and she skilled enough, to avoid their long distance shots, but they were gaining. The Hunter's ship was of Chozo-make and the best huntership in the galaxy, but no huntership could match a fully equipped battleship. Samus knew they would be overtaken, unless she could lose them by outmaneuvering them in asteroid field Y654.
Samus piloted the ship into the maze of floating rock, the battleships right on her tail. Their massive guns fired upon the bright orange ship before them, sometimes hitting it, sometimes missing and hitting the asteroids.
"We can't take much more of this, My Lady," said Creto.
"I know," answered Samus as a blow rocked the ship side to side.
She launched the ship into a nose dive under an asteroid. Suddenly the nearest pursuer launched a missile that blew it into violent little chunks of rock. The pieces scattered all around her and she couldn't elude them. The ship was battered by the debris and several missiles from the battleships.
Once they had out-run the rubble, a deadly series of energy blasts hit the ship, and Samus barrel rolled to avoid a second round. Her mind was racing and her heart beating madly. Never before had she met an opponent in flight that could render her ship near-death. The circumstances had never been higher, or an enemy with such an advantage. But then she saw her advantage--the center of the field.
"Hold on!" she called out.
Despite the oncoming obstacles, she gunned the engines to full power and flew towards the dense belt of asteroids. She zipped between a pair of rocks and entered the center, desperately thinking of a way to put to battleships behind her out of commission.
And as she had hoped, the battleships had difficulty in navigating the field's center. It was tightly packed with rotating and floating rocks, some of the spaces barely big enough for Samus's ship.
For several tense minutes she led them through the haphazardly placed asteroids. These offered her plenty of objects to hide behind and use as a shield to spare her failing ones. The battleships were just too big, though, as the asteroids rained down on them. The sharper ones ripped their hulls, and every time they used their guns, they only created more dangers to avoid.
Soon, only one battleship remained in the hunt for the Hunter, Puideya's own flagship, the Deya.
It was one of the most heavily armored battleships in the galaxy. A prototype for the GF's new line of ships, the Deya was the fastest of the five who had set out after Samus. It was equipped with only the finest weapons, and of this, Samus was all too much aware. So far she had been unable to shake the Deya, and the asteroid field was almost at its end. She had to either disable its guns or engines, both just as impossible as the other.
"Get a scanning on their shields' power," Samus ordered Creto.
"Their shields are at 23 and falling," replied Creto, "our own are a 47, but many other systems are on the brink of collapse."
"Is the cloak still working?" she asked.
"Barely," answered Creto.
"Do it."
Creto cloaked the ship as Samus brought them around a large asteroid in a 180 degree loop. Dipping down so she was below the Deya's belly, she flew to face the ship.
Activating her own blasters, she sent a storm of blasts on the asteroids nearest the Deya. The smaller rocks battered the Deya's weakened shield and provided cover for Samus as she released a fierce bombardment of missiles onto the ship.
"Their shields are down!" Creto called out as Samus brought the ship around for another pass.
Samus slowed the ship and rolled away from the missile sent her way. It flew wide and smashed into an asteroid. Samus then sent a truly devastating series of missiles and blasts directly into the Deya's underside, where the thrusters were located.
Immediately, the Deya slowed, and the huntership continued its pass of the great battleship. The Deya was too damaged to continue its pursuit; her bold attack had made certain of that. They could finally escape, as long as their hunter-ship held together. But, the Deya's guns were still operational.
She slammed the controls to the left and started to exit the Deya's range of fire. As a farewell gift, the Deya sent a round her way. It hit the ship with its full force, and, finally, the tittering systems fell.
"Samus!" cried out Creto as left the Deya's range, "the shields are down! Scanners offline, heating, and cooling too. The power-line for the thruster's auto reboot system has been severed, along with the missile launchers."
Damn it! Samus thought. They'd just escaped their enemy, and now the ship was falling apart. At least it held this long.
Dozens of alerts and alarms lit up the cockpit in a flurry of red and yellow. Automated messages of caution were uttered, and Maelos, who had been hunched over trying to control his swirling stomach, looked up.
"What's going on? I thought we made it," he asked, his voice weak.
Another alert lit up on the control panel. It was not a broken system but one that was working just right. It was her lock-on detection alarm. She touched the light, and it created a mini-hologram. It displayed a picture of two missiles and a description of them, but she needed no description.
Oh no.
"Stream all power to the engines, now!"
"Yes," answered Creto.
Two high speed, heat-seeking missiles were on their tail. She had no shields. There was no way to counter them because her missiles were disabled. Normal blasters wouldn't do the job fast enough, they would reach her before she could do any real damage. No hope of outrunning them existed. She needed a secondary target that she could get the missiles to hit instead of her.
Then she saw it.
The last asteroid, a massive one not far before her with its surface covered in expansive craters and ice. Using her expert eye, Samus judged that she could make a 70 degree angled shot over it, if she timed it right. That should be enough to throw off the missiles and force them into hitting it instead. And if not...well it was their only chance.
She shifted the engines into overdrive and felt a kick as they groaned to meet her demand. They weren't going to last long. She was flying right into the asteroid. Her ears had long ago stopped listening to the sounding alarms, but in the moments before she pulled up, she heard Maelos draw in a breath.
The missiles followed them like a vulture straight towards the asteroid. Samus was fervently counting the seconds until she would pull up when the worst happened; the thrusters gave out.
She felt them give, and instantly knew that the back-up system had to be started. The ship maintained the same speed, but they were coming closer to the asteroid's surface. With the ship at this angle and the inability to accelerate, she would crash into the asteroid and everything would end there.
She grasped the controls tightly and started to pull up prematurely. Her plan was failing, but there was nothing she could do to fix it.
Her mind raced through all her knowledge of the ship. Creto had said the thruster's auto reboot was severed but had said nothing of the manual switch in the backroom.
"Maelos!" she screamed, straining to hold the controls back and keep the ship even.
"You have to activate the other system. Pull the switch by my weapon cabinet!"
The ship was starting to drift down. It was dipping to the right, ready to roll over and careen into the asteroid beneath them. The missiles were about to hit them. The ship had almost reached the top of the asteroid, but it wasn't going fast enough to clear it.
"Maelos!"
Fighting fear and nausea, he undid his harness and sprung from his seat to the floor. The ship dipped and scrapped the asteroid. Struggling to stand, Maelos ran to the back, and just before the ship crashed, threw back the switch.
The ship fell towards the icy rock and then, in a sudden burst of energy, cleared the asteroid with barely inches to spare. Its newly powered thrusters launched it into the void of space. Maelos's legs gave out, and he was tossed into the ship's backroom. Behind them, the missiles exploded into the asteroid and sent millions of rock particles in every direction. There was a single flare of red and then the oxygen-less space reclaimed the darkness.
Samus laughed with relief as Maelos echoed the cry from far in the ship's end.
"We did it!" she exclaimed. In all of her close-calls there had never been another living soul around; she had never had a partner to help her. This time she had had both in Maelos, and she was going to let him know how well he did.
"Great job Maelos! Haha! Now we're almost clear."
She was just about to call Creto and start charting their destination when the realization that they could go no-where hit her. At that moment in her celebration, she was abruptly silenced. They would have to go out of the Federation's borders; it was the only place open to them.
"Where are we going to go?" asked Maelos as he limped into the cockpit. He had re-hurt his left shoulder during his heroics and now held it gingerly.
But neither he or Samus were given any more time to think about their course. Suddenly all systems but the most basic went out, and the cockpit was thrown into darkness.
"What happened?" Samus cried out.
"The ship's systems are overtaxed," Creto said from overhead, "only the steering and minimal thrusters remain online. I am charting a landing course on the nearest moon of that planet."
Their victory cut short, both Samus and Maelos looked out and saw a planet far ahead of them, just a speck in their sight. But just to the left of their ship, filling up the windshield while in its furtherest point of orbit, was a moon of that planet.
Immediately, the moon's gravity caught them and they were pulled down towards the atmosphere.
"Get back in your seat, Maelos," she said in a low, serious voice, "we're not out of this yet."
Maelos obeyed and Samus was silent as she tried to get control of the ship. So many systems were down that she had almost zero influence over the ship's velocity and direction as they entered the moon's atmosphere.
The moon's surface was a blurred landscape of green and purple. As they came closer, Samus saw that the green was a forest that dominated the area they were headed for while the purple formed mountains in the distance. The land before them neared, and Samus could make out individual trees.
They were going in too fast, but she could do nothing to slow the racing ship or change its course. The tree tops were right below them, speeding by like rippling waves. She cried out in frustration and once more tried to pull up.
These efforts were in vain though, and the orange ship crashed into the forest.
Something was shaking her. Into the darkness of her mind came a fuzzy something, a feeling of being needed. Someone was calling her name. It echoed in her head, and then she woke.
"Samus!" Maelos shouted. He shook her and yelled again, "wake up! Help me!"
Samus opened her eyes to find her cockpit in ruins. Several tree branches had punctured the windshield and ripped open the control panel and walls. Shattered glass covered the panel and floor and her lap.
"Samus!" exclaimed Maelos as she looked at him. He seemed alright despite the gash in his forehead, which was already crusted with blood.
"How long have I been out?" she asked.
"I, uh, I don't know," replied Maelos. He closed his eyes to think and then swayed on his feet. He nearly fell over but managed to grab the wall and lean against it.
"You should sit down," Samus told him.
"But Sonilla..." he sighed as he sat down in his seat. He then motioned to the unconscious woman next to him.
"Ugh," groaned Samus as she remembered everything about their flight.
She started to unbuckled her harness when an acute pain in her right arm shot through her body. She winced and studied her arm. A good sized piece of glass was imbedded in her flesh. Its jagged edge pointing towards the broken windshield.
Carefully, Samus pulled it out. The pain was terrible as it slid out of her muscle, but luckily it hadn't hit an artery or large vein. Blood slowly trickled down her arm. She relaxed once it had left her body and then threw it to the floor, where it broke in two.
She then checked the rest of herself. There were some nasty cuts on her bare legs, but no more serious punctures.
Samus unbuckled herself and got up. Once again the broken glass was against her. It littered the floor all the way to where Maelos and Sonilla were, but Samus had no shoes on. Gritting her teeth, she picked her way through it and came to Sonilla's side.
"Torim was poisoned," she told Maelos, even though he knew that. She then said, "did she drink anything?"
Maelos went pale as he recalled the moment Sonilla had tried to drink her father's wine. Undoubtedly it had touched her lips and entered her system. Yes, she had drank of her father's poison.
Samus took this to be the answer and ordered he get her out of the seat harness. She ran into her sleeping quarters. From it came the sound of ripping fabric as she removed her dress and put on her signature skin tight body suit. She came out and went to her suit's storage room where she donned her bio-suit.
"Activate the recharge chamber," she commanded Creto as she lifted up Sonilla.
"My Lady, the chamber takes too much energy. Our power is limited right now and this action could turn off the whole ship."
"Take offline everything except the chamber then," Samus relied heatedly.
"Yes, Samus," answered Creto.
Maelos followed Samus into the recesses of the ship. In the far back they stopped before a wall. Panels which had covered the wall slid back to reveal a glass chamber filled with light blue liquid.
Samus entered one door and entered a pre-entry walkway. An oxygen mask dropped from overhead, and she put this over Sonilla's mouth. She then entered the actual chamber through a second door.
Maelos peered into the glass room and watched them. Samus, in her suit, moved normally, while Sonilla swayed and was dragged side-to-side by the fluid. The loose bits of her hair lifted up and floated shapelessly in the blue.
He continued to watch as dozens of IV's and other monitors were inserted or attached to Sonilla's body. This process held him spell bound for several minutes until Samus left the chamber and removed her helmet.
"How bad is it, Creto?" Samus asked the computer as it observed her vital signs.
"I am unable to identify what the poison is. It is something I have no information on, but whatever it is, it is potent. When she vomited on the dock, most of it left her system. Her dose was so small that her body had time to react to it, unlike Torim. But several of her organs have already been damaged and are deteriorating. I can keep her hydrated and nourished, and monitor her, but I can't heal her," said the computer
Samus walked away and then returned with a towel, which she used to wipe off her bio-suit. She sighed and Creto continued.
"I don't know what to say, but I don't know how to treat her. I've filtered her system already, but still it continues to eat away at her vitals. It doesn't look good, Samus. If she does not receive the correct antidote, which I don't even know if it exists, in the next 36 hours then she will die."
Maelos grasped his head and then sank to the ground in defeat. He'd thought that they would succeed at the Unity Ball, and that all of this would be over. Instead, Torim had been murdered, his daughter lay dying, and they were stranded on a moon with no knowledge of it or means to leave.
It was so overwhelming, so depressing. He felt physically wounded and emotionally reeling. What would they do? How would they get out of this? Samus had said they would defeat this, the threat of Medici. But now that seemed so far and yet so near at the same time. Survival was now their biggest mission, but by completing that they were allowing Medici time to do his will.
His mind screamed for a solution, but he could think of nothing.
"What do we do?" he asked Samus.
He sat on the floor, head in his hands and looked up to her. And Samus remembered their conversation the day before, but this time she couldn't say with conviction that they would success. She wasn't sure; she, too, was despairing.
And so, despite the pain it caused her, she answered him honestly, "I don't know."
