Something Wicked Comes, Orbit of K-2L, Vercengetorix-6886 System, Macha Nebula, Arada Galaxy
The enormous shape of the Scourge of Heaven dropped out of N-Space like a moon moving into an eclipse position with its fleet forming a new field of stars in the sky. Not a perfect one due to its flying wing shape, but the light of Vercengetorix-6886 dimmed all the same. The menacing shadow of the ship almost seemed to stretch across the world, a malevolent cloak wrapped around a continent. Black enveloped the surface of what was supposed to be day, turning the warmth of the sun into a cold night as it loomed overhead like the wings of some horrific bat.
And like a hive queen, it was swarming with other ships of various sizes that hung near it like a retinue. Everything from the smallest torpedo boat to battleships and super-capitals hovered near this staggering expression of Space Pirate Might as they assumed their positions near every point in the system, using extra-afloraltite catalyst to burn their way through interdiction fields or simply appearing as close as they could and realspace-driving their way there.
Each of them brought about their own darkness onto the world below, an army far larger than the meagre populace of the planet below waiting within their hulls for an easy victim and a quick, violent but glorious victory to add to their dire legend. The picket fleets and defensive armaments of the system were valiant in their efforts to respond immediately, sending both manned and automated combatants in the face of the Space Pirate armada, but all attempts to hail for nearby reinforcements were met with either jamming or warnings that they too were under attack.
A fleet like this struck at broad fronts measured across multiple galaxies at once, and generalised offensives like this rarely left individual systems able to call for help from the front. Not while the rear was being cut off by deep probing offensives, communication disruptions, and broad interdiction nets. Whatever help they could hope for, it would not be coming.
The Space Pirates knew the Federation had an edge in attritional warfare, with the emphasis on speed and individual might versus the Federation's mass and depth meaning that protracted campaigns were ill favoured. Such approaches to warfare; built around lightning raids, penetrating offensives, decisive battles of annihilation, and scorched earth invasions; were part of what earned the Confederacy of Dismor the moniker "space pirate" after all.
Thus, it would be foolish to expect the Pirates to give their victims a chance to call for help on their own terms.
They made their bloody work with the haste of the possessed. Planetary sieges were usually prolonged, protracted operations against endlessly rebuilding fortifications and a foe with the advantage in preparation and infrastructure as well as the homefield advantage in save stations and repair facilities. Planetary or even system shields would nullify orbital bombardment, forcing gruelling assault work while both sides would seek to reinforce from beyond the system and/or with what they could produce with their mobile construction and production vehicles and bases.
Planetary campaigns could and usually did drag out for years between peer opponents. Soldiers reporting from save stations after emergency teleports again and again until either killed beyond recover or with blocked teleportation. War machines being deployed and replaced with reinforcements or fresh production as long as harvesters and refiners could supply the centres. Protracted efforts by warships and space stations large and small to batter each other down through immensely durable regenerating shielding and incredibly resilient armour while lengthy duels and engagements spread across the worlds.
That was of course, assuming a peer contest, and the pirate fleet was anything but a peer opponent. More attackers were aboard Ridley's ship than there were people across the entire system. The defenders were outnumbered by comical margins, and the attackers had far heavier equipment. A world like K-2L, yet to have so much as a proper name, was mincemeat before the hounds.
They fought well, they fought bravely, they could even bring a few of their foe down with what they had at hand. But it could only ever end one way.
Dragonscorn, Bridge of the Scourge of Heaven
Aboard the Space Pirate fleet, they were preparing for a routine massacre, as happens countless times across the universe. Something done so often that they were simply running through the motions without concern. This would all be over soon enough. Too soon perhaps. There wouldn't be much fun to be had this time around. But this was a stop on the way to bigger and better things.
At the Bridge was the Space Pirate Enforcer himself, claws clutched to his roost while his predatory pupilless eyes stared below with terrible malice. Lower personnel who were literally beneath him monitored every scrap of data that the ship was gathering, checking over their monitors in the pits to get organic eyes on any information the computers gathered.
He didn't really care for the fineries of command beyond the movement of troops and the orders to strike. The business of logistics, deploying bases and mobile factories to resupply and reinforce troops, the requisition of weapons and equipment, and the construction of facilities was so terribly dull to him. He wanted the rush of primal violence and vicious murder. Command was the fine art of moving so many dots and icons on a screen or a holomap and making sure the lines indicating supply weren't being severed.
His command staff checked monitors and paced about in the trench-like passages that surrounded the perch the Cunning God of Death used, coordinating with assets organic and mechanical to make it all run. The gloomily lit purple, green, and yellow interior of the ship framed them all in menacing shadow, and none were cast in a more frightful manner than Ridley himself. His every scornful look was magnified by the lighting, the urge to kill building within him.
"What a miserable pile of rocks." Ridley sneered.
He hadn't imagined very much but what he saw somehow managed to impress him even less than what he imagined. He doubted he'd even think about this planet very much when he was done. Just another box to tick before he could sink his talons into a real prize and be done with this back-and-forth meatgrinder where every success on one front meant another emergency that needed his attention on another.
He wondered for a moment, what these insects did to warrant more than a few moments of his time. He came to the decision that them wasting his time was enough to warrant everything he was going to do to them in less than a second and snorted.
"Analysis: Planetary Screen Shields failing, we will be ceasing primary weapon bombardment to avoid catastrophic Afloraltite catalysation.." AAE-13 said, their monotone flat and devoid of even the vaguest of inflexions.
The machine was perhaps the most "excited" for this job in as much as anyone could ever call AAE-13 excited about anything. They saw the Afloraltite to be gained as advantageous to their plans. They hoped to advance their careers, of course, as was only natural. Many came to the Inferno Pack with dreams of using Ridley's lack of interest in the fineries of generalship as a chance to move ahead in the brutal, cutthroat hierarchy of the Confederacy.
"Yeah, I don't need to be a supercomputer to figure that out. Shut up." Ridley grunted with annoyance.
He raised his head in clear menace hissed through his teeth to let them know that he was in no mood for their antics.
"I bet I can kill all the squishies in the aquatic habitats before you're done on land Ridley. Up to wager with me flything?." Ivax snapped her jaws in visible anticipation. Ridley felt nothing for her annoyance but simply snorted steam through his nostrils as he began to stretch his wings.
"Everything I've seen of you social, collectivist animals tells me that your hobbies like gambling are wastes of time you do to distract yourselves. I don't need it." He said dismissively.
Ivax bared her teeth, the sea monster was disappointed.
"You're a dreadful bore, disappointment on wings." Ivax spoke in a voice like a crocodile and a boiling teapot's bastard child.
"Oh I'm sure you thought that was very clever, but I just don't feel any of the relevant emotions to be hurt." Ridley said mockingly. While he had no capacity for shame, camaraderie, or even "liking" another person; all unnecessary things for a solitary predator; his predatory sadism to encourage the thrill of the hunt had developed into a razor-wire tongue. Insulting people was like clawing and biting their emotions, and he enjoyed the feeling of a hunter's supremacy over prey.
Turning away from Ivax as she spat out a curse, he checked the progress of the battle again. The enemy fleets were all hopelessly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the pirates. The screens would
"Anything I need to note before I give the order?" Ridley asked.
"No, they are all but helpless." Zenkin said.
Zenkin was disappointed to be sure by the quality of the target, but they would find their chances to avail themselves against more worthy targets later.
"Then what are we waiting for? Let's have a little fun." Ridley snarled gleefully.
"Now you're speaking my language." Corvus giggled as she licked her tongue across her teeth, slavering for the taste of blood and carnage to delight her mouth once again.
"The soldiers are ready to execute the invasion, Enforcer. Shall we get started? I'd like to get back to campaigns that actually advance my career." Weavel said, folding his hands behind his back as he stared at the world below him. The usual assortment of continents and seas and clouds wafting across the surface. He'd put an end to thousands like it.
"Kill to your heart's content but make sure to leave some for the market. We'll be in and out before you know it so don't hold anything back." Ridley roared as he stood up on his hind legs and spread his bat like wings to their fullest extent.
Hope and a Dream, Sidhemor, K-2L
"No way...no way in hell." Thergax, a six limbed insectoid buzzed as he looked at the menacing profile of the enormous craft hover over the world. Everyone beneath the Shadow of the Scourge was shaking with fearful recognition. Children cried and the grown shook in fear while terrified whispering went through the crowds.
The lights on its bottom provided an odd effect to its eclipse position, but what was unmistakeable after a cursory glance with some magnifiers is that the ship bore the mark of the dread enforcer Ridley. The galaxy on fire.. The emblem of the Inferno Pack, the worst of an already very bad lot.
"..P-pirates? Here?! But this sector's supposed to be quiet...we don't have the weapons to..." Elendrina stammered before gulping in fright as she saw the colossal shape of the enemy ship and its escorts loom overhead.
"Get everyone to whatever safety we can find. Hopefully we'll be able to buy enough time for reinforcements to arrive." Rodney said, closing his eyes and taking a look in the direction of the armoury.
"Do you think we've got a chance?" Thegak chattered as the warship above began to pulse and flash with strange lights, almost certainly decoupling parasitic craft from it to begin the invasion.
"If we fight, some of us might live. If we don't; we're all going to die in the slave pens or dissection tables." Rodney said bitterly. The weak smile he offered was enough evidence though, that even he knew that survival was a long shot at best.
"Besides...I have a plan." He said, looking to the aflorite and then at Ridley's massive starship in orbit. This might just work out, he thought to himself. He just hoped the odds weren't going to be as long as he feared, and reassured himself with knowledge that he was being depended on.
Playtime's End, Neorai forests
Samus was a giggly mess as she petted a very nosy Pyonchi, who was quite adamant about her sharing the food she had in her hands. Grainy black and leavened bread toasted to perfection, cut from a loaf, ovoid in shape, containing a hearty meal of cultured meat cut into thin strips like old Iberian pork, with an acorn-fed, salt-cured, and honey-glazed taste and a smooth, marbled texture.
Paired with it were carefully proportioned portions of leafy vegetables which had a pleasant, slightly tangy taste paired with rich camembert-like soft cheese and a smoky brown sauce that gave the sandwich a bit of a kick, with some tangier circular slices of vegetables thrown in to ensure she had everything she needed in a single meal; with some chocolate and carbonated juice to fill out her needs and wants. Virginia knew she liked to share her food and rarely sat still for long too, and so prepared more than she'd actually eat.
"Wait! I'll share! I'll share!" She said as she broke a piece off and let them have some of her sandwich. She smiled warmly at the Rabil as they nibbled at the offered food, wagging their tail to express contentment.
"I can't wait to show you to everyone!" She said before she noticed something unusual.
It was getting darker much faster than should be possible. It should still be late afternoon...it wasn't bedtime was it? She didn't want to go to sleep just yet. Not when there was still so much fun to be had.
Ho-hum, why did she need to take a few hours out of every day to sleep? It was absolutely criminal that she had to sacrifice so much of her day to nature's call to a soft place to lie down.
She looked back to see a number of streaking shapes flying over the landscape and squinted her eyes at them. They looked like...planes of some sort? Moving far too fast for people trying to land.
Maybe they just really wanted to get down and meet everyone? But...they looked like Pirate ships, and she remembered something about the Space Pirates being bad people. But they seemed like monsters under the bed. Not something she'd actually meet...
Only momentary distraction by winged animals flying away in terror and her turning to look at them saved her eyes from the blinding flash of the first explosions. Nightfall became a blinding morning in a second, her personal shield emitter activating to protect her from light that would have incinerated an ordinary human of old earth, and heat could be felt on her back before the gust of wind threw her and Pyonchi to the ground.
She shrieked in fear as the detonations ripped through many hardened bunkers and the ground churned over as if someone had thrown it into a mixer.
Trees buckled and were stripped of their leaves and had branches snapped off like twigs, and the thunderous roar of the initial bombardment drowned out all other noise. She clapped her ears to her head and screamed in fright. But the sounds of aircraft overhead and the keening wail of their engines like screaming children made her unable to hear even that.
The sonic boom accompanying the engine wail shattered the canopies of many remaining trees, while the meson bombs they threw into the ground sent geysers of partly molten and charred and all subatomically distorted dirt and bedrock into the air that climbed until they reached into and through the clouds.
Shooting stars raced through the sky until they were like raindrops. She took a moment to see them, using the binoculars she was given by Jacen as a gift, and saw that they matched the spiked egg shapes of the Space Pirates she recalled her parents warning her of. She also recalled her father saying that the Space Pirates would eat naughty children.
She had to run.
She looked back to the Landing Plaza many kilometres away and stumbled her way towards it, seeing a great purple shape descend towards the ground.
Monster in Purple, Fionna Landing Plaza, K-2L
"This isn't a party you get to leave. So let me take you away from the door." Ridley snarled as he grabbed at a shuttle and shoved the craft, as large as sixty old earth aircraft carriers arranged into a rough rectangle that was trying its best to lift off with its thousands of passengers downwards with a press after slamming into it. Its engines sought to lift off into the heavens, screaming as they were met with unexpected resistance while his wings beat with the thunderclap of a shrieking sound barrier and the trails of igniting air. It was a magnificent contest, but he won out and reoriented the vehicle towards the earth and shoved it down like a meteor.
The kilometre-and-a-half-sized craft then slammed into the ground hard enough to rupture its hull, an explosion erupting from it that could be seen from kilometres away as his plasma breath seared its way through forty-meter thick starship armour and into its afloraltite stores to shower the denizens of K-2L with shrapnel. The catalysts for the ship's zero-point energy systems erupted in a chain reaction that quickly formed a titanic mushroom cloud while he rose from the blast. Not a perfect ignition, but he wanted nearby witnesses.
He spread his wings and roared over the deafening blast, the heat of the detonation that incinerated unarmoured people until nothing was left but black stains where their shadows once were seemingly failing to affect him, while whatever tears he received in his wings from railgun-like shards of superheated metal healed over almost immediately. He felt like a god, with the lives and deaths of so many at the tips of his claws.
Volleys of fireballs erupted from his mouth, seeking gouts of plasma so hot that most atoms simply disintegrated into quarks flowing like raindrops and engulfing just about everything he could see. Trees not smashed by the explosion before caught aflame if they were not simply incinerated, flesh disintegrated as molecular bonds tore apart and electrons flowed from their atoms like litchi skins. When he ceased his barrage of fireballs, he eyed the area for any other targets. A bunker caught his eye, fortified in a manner to resist heavy bombardment.
Anti-aircraft weapons simply glanced off of his bioshielding. Quad-barrelled mass drivers, surface-to-air missile launchers, and cutting anti-projectile lasers and far stranger weapons all had their own goes at him only to meet him simply spreading out his arms and laughing as he shrugged off the strikes that fell upon his body.
Missiles far faster than their own sound, speedy enough to be invisible even to the augmented eyes of the present era raced towards him as he easily dodged his way through the thicket of lasers once he had stressed his durability advantage enough.
He simply snatched one out of the air as if it were moving in slow motion and flung it back to its sender, scattering Federal Militia troops whose mass drivers barked to life with a volley of relativistic projectiles.
"Boring" he snarled as he let out a scream so powerful that the exhalation of air was enough to bowl over the soldiers and chew away at their shielding while already shielding and armour-stripped soldiers simply exploded into gore, those who managed to "port out" to save stations would be hunted down later as a sea of pirates swarmed the land.
He threaded the needle of hypervelocity rounds going fast enough to launch themselves clean out of the solar system given a few years and stabbed his tail into a shield meant to resist heavy-duty bombardment until he felt it break; cackling like a demon as the bunker's chief defence sputtered and gave way before his power.
He grinned and flew over his now vulnerable target and then dove down like a comet. He righted himself and let his taloned feet slam into the earth. The ground shook and cracked at his feet before giving way, bedrock splintering and adamantocrete tunnels collapsing from his raw strength. Tunnel collapses and cave-ins would surely have killed the residents already, but he was not yet satisfied.
He let out another one of his terrible roars while purple and red flame began to build in his beaked mouth. He inhaled and cast his head forth; letting loose a gout of flame and didn't stop until it had pierced all the way through. Sweeping the beam around, he cut off the flow of energy and looked at the molten ruin he had wrought, smelling the vaporised rock and metal with a grin. They may not have been a problem for his soldiers but in his own words, he was an army all his own.
"Can't have you sitting out the fun hiding in the corner, can we?" He said, chuckling to himself as he sifted through the rubble, looking for any remains. Sure enough, he found one body, charred beyond recognition but still not fully carbonized or evaporated. Licking his teeth, he bit into the flesh and ripped out a mouth full. His teeth crushed the bones without effort, and his throat pushed down the morsel immediately.
"Hrm, not bad. A bit overdone, but it can't be helped." He chuckled as he finished his grisly meal, his tongue lapping any of the burnt organs that fell out of the openings he made in the carcass before they could touch the ground as he took flight once more. He looked down at the ocean of flame that he had created, forests burning as far as his keen eyes could see in every spectrum. He shook with an obscene, unclean joy at the sight, wishing he could hear the screams of the people as he shot across the sky at hypersonic speeds.
He slammed into the area around the Gaela landing plaza and smashed into a row of smaller individual spacecraft he recognised as having faster-than-light capabilities. Dirt, flesh, and metal erupted in all directions while his impact tore down some of the walls of the port structures around him. He let out a vicious roar of gleeful malice, letting it be heard far and wide to let everyone know that he had sounded the hunting call.
"Come on, we've got fresh meat here!" Ridley roared. Turning around on his two feet, he saw a number of children huddled for safety with their teachers and turned around with a malevolent gleam in his yellow eyes.
"Oh aren't you all just the sweetest things. Here, let me make it all better. Let's start with you kiddies, because I want to play something very fun." He said, folding his wings behind him as he walked in a bipedal manner towards them, licking his teeth and sniffing towards them as he clawed through the obstruction between him and his targets.
"Oh don't worry, I'm not going to kill you...immediately. We're going to have ourselves a good time first." He cackled as he reached for his first target. He was only briefly distracted by the sight of a pirate transport craft ascending towards his flagship before he turned back to his victims and bared his teeth in an evil grin.
Samus' escape, Gaela landing Plaza
Everything was on fire. The heat was so intense she began to feel weak. Smoke hung heavy in the air, blotting out the sun and casting everything into hellish darkness lit only by what was on the ground. But through the sound of an inferno consuming whatever fuel made itself available, she could hear the drumrolls of continual explosions. She could hear shouts and roars in so many languages, she heard things breaking, she heard things moving. But most of all, she heard screaming.
So much screaming. All blending together into a din that burnt its way into her ears. The constant wailing of the damned and the dying, so many cries for help and people begging for something, anything to save them. But she could do nothing.
She tried her best, tried to throw medical salve or tap on the medical teleportation beacons of the fallen like she was taught onto her friends, the blank eyes of Jacen not flinching as she quailed and tried to fit his head back on. Her hands were red and her feet almost slipped on the gore of the young boy. She cried so much, but he lay there still, only one eye staring back at her from a half-missing face.
He had tried to ask the big marshal in command of the space pirate soldiers where his parents were. The one she would come to know as Weavel split him in half with a casual twist of his arms and threw him through a building before collapsing it atop him. So...so much blood. The sound he made as he stopped moving was a scream unlike anything she'd ever heard before, a sound she didn't even know people could make. But she had to save him, she was his friend...she had to save him.
She had shoved the boulder-sized debris that had covered him off; a gift from her standard pattern augmentations, but he still would not rise. What was she doing wrong? Was she doing a bad job? This was supposed to work. But she felt a hand tugging at her. A crying, begging voice desperate to be anywhere but here.
Aisha begged, pleaded for her to go. She was so scared. Aisha was usually so brave, so sure of what to do. Now she was crying for her mommy before she threw her hands over her mouth and sobbed as a six-eyed Urtraghian jumped down onto the ground, its form almost seeming to have teleported there with the distinct thunderclap of faster than sound movement due to the power of its augmentations that let it move faster even than her eyes could follow. The Urtraghian growled something she could not understand, its power armour shifting silently with its movements as it sniffed the air before mass driver rounds began pinging off of its shields with metallic cracks.
The Urtraghian kicked over the nearest auto-transport with a solid snap of its legs towards the source of the weapons fire, getting Samus to duck down as Aisha screamed. The building before them, not rated to withstand impacts of this magnitude; had its first floor balcony caved in by the speeding car before the Trooper spat out a burst of projectiles that tore out man sized chunks of civilian grade fortecrete with dreadful pulsing sounds. The awful green glow of the weapons searing their way into Samus' retinas as she quivered.
Aisha tried to move, Samus' eyes shot open once again as she reached out to try and stop her before the Pirate began to turn around to notice her. A croaking, deep roar was made as the Space Pirate saw fresh prey, fresh meat. Other people who had been hiding in their direction began to bolt, and the six-eyed monster made a hunting call before extending an energy scythe and charging like a cannon ball. Grigor Stefanovich; the person who managed her daycare split in sizzling pieces before he had enough time to scream.
Volgan Iral; a nice reptilian boy who made a lemonade she liked to drink often; exploded into ash and bone chips from a single shot that powered on through half a dozen people she didn't know the names of before crashing into the ground with a shower of shards.
A grenade went out, dozens more died, only her decision to close her eyes saving her sight as Elrani Theyri; the girl who had taught her how to play with a skip rope was lifted to the level of one of the nearly four-meter tall space pirates and simply had her head bitten off by the reptilian while others turned towards the spray of blood and descended on it like sharks. Emaciated militia pirates tore off chunks of flesh in a frenzy before being thrown away with swats from the more muscular regulars.
A grunt of an alien throat brought Samus and Aisha's attention to the left, where they saw the gaunt form of a militia pirate staring down at them. Fear jolted into their hearts as the crustaceoid pirate clacked his mandibles in recognition of her orders. It was a hesitant acknowledgement, and she looked around as if to confirm before she exhaled and sought to carry through with her orders.
The Bermudan muttered something Samus could not understand, something mournful sounding. Like a plea for forgiveness before she raised her gun at her and began charging up a blast, green energy collecting in the barrel. But when she cried and screamed, the Pirate's gaze faltered beneath her helmet. It made a soft gurgling sound and lowered its weapon, pointing her towards an avenue of escape and pushing her towards it. The nameless conscript, a dreg of the ladders of hierarchy, could not bring itself to hurt something so vulnerable, and it turned to report the completely wrong direction.
A small act of pity had saved her life, but another pirate militaman who had hesitated in a similar fashion, refusing to strike down whimpering children and arguing with the commanders over it found itself to not be so fortunate. Its shielding took only so many hits to break, and they peeled off its armour with frenzied savagery to get at the carapaced flesh of the militia pirate who screamed in horror as they were pulled apart and devoured. Entrails and viscera spitting out in all directions and the pirate's screams stopped shortly.
Samus vomited almost immediately.
She flinched as something exploded to her left shortly after she dove into the streets, having outrun the blaze devouring the forest only to find even greater horror here. A large quadrupedal mechanical monster bearing the symbology of Ridley's unit stomping through and raised its many barrelled armatures; rippling retorts of weapons fire coming from it as the elephantine body of AAE-13 mercifully ignored her, busy with reducing fortifications to rubble as they were and stepping on tanks like toys, secondary weapons spitting multicoloured death in other directions while Samus and Aisha crawled through the wreckage.
Their mammoth body faded into the smoke, becoming a black silhouette, and then could be seen no more save for the many coloured pulses of their weapons. She was shaken, and her eyes lingered on the silhouette for some time. The deep drones of the machine and its warpack made her spine feel like it was trying to crawl out of her mouth. And her skin was so soaked in sweat she felt like she was underwater. Gelrandi, one of the defence militia captains of K-2L shot a barrage of missiles at AAE-13. They were always so brave, so heroic, so inspiring. Samus even designed an action figure in their honour; her brilliant mind working the fabricators with dextrous brilliance.
The fusile missile exploded in a shaped eruption of solar brilliance, forcing its energy all into one direction in an effort to pierce through AAE-13's shielding. A detonation that would have been considered massive overkill against the defences of the old Cheyenne facility on Earth bloomed and the robot stopped in its tracks as the dust settled.
AAE-13 swivelled its castle-sized uppermost body and fired precisely once with its primary armature and Gelrandi and the entire building complex they were on ceased to be in a cascade of evil green light. Samus pulled Aisha further, they had to get out of here, nearly tripping on the dismembered corpse of an infant who had been partly eaten by the battle pets of the pirates whose shrill howls keened in their ears in the distance.
She looked to the right, hearing someone shouting for help, someone pinned by rubble as fire advanced towards them. Another monstrous eel headed and six eyed creature with metal-covered limbs pulled back the bladed helm they wore and grabbed at the rubble, shoving boulder-sized debris aside with ease. The man who had been pinned absent-mindedly saying thanks before the Urtraghian pulled him up and snarled words of contempt in a language she didn't understand, then bit into his chest.
She shuddered, sickened by the sight of flesh being torn free while the pirate threw the man to starved-looking conscripts who gladly ripped into him. She was going to puke once again, she couldn't keep her lunch down, and she was breathing so hard it hurt. She didn't stick around, she had to get away.
Her small legs, weighed down by carrying Pyonchi buckled as Hunter Corvus raced ahead, her guns firing in either direction to pop off the heads of those who tried to run and then running through a security trooper, energy scythe piercing through her power armour with ease. She took a moment to examine the dying woman and lifted her up, letting gravity cut her in half. She laughed to herself and let her flight back kick into action once more, wheeling through the sky.
Corvus cackled and cut through the fleeing aerocraft with deceptive grace but obvious malice. Kwame, a somewhat older boy who often gave Samus sweets tried to call out for her as soon as he laid eyes on her, waving towards her. Samus' eyes caught something falling and she screamed out a plea for him to watch out before he saw an aerohauler plummeting towards him and then crushing him into gory paste, cutting off their initial route of escape and forcing them down into an alleyway and its tunnel systems.
She crawled through a place that seemed to be free of smoke, calling for her parents. Where were they? She thought to herself. She just wanted them to see her, to know she was safe. They would know what to do. They always did, she thought before the looming shape of a pirate destroyer pierced the veil overhead. She went silent, and pushed herself against the wall of the circular crawl space and pushed Pyonchi's head towards hers. Her heart was beating so quickly. Aisha continued to whimper, begging anyone who was listening to make this all go away.
The Admiral's raider ship scattered small weapons fire in all directions, shredding through what foes it spotted while the cyborg themselves rode a skiff, observing the carnage through their optics. For a moment she thought they saw her as they fixated on her direction and she felt her heart-stopping however briefly, but they simply fired some manner of green beam at a crowd who sought to make a break for it. A weight lifted from her chest, but the fear had yet to dissipate.
A warbling sound was heard as they swept the beam from left to right, each victim collapsing into a pile of goo while a tendril flicked forward, seeming to order a bomber flight to make another run there. They were using lower-powered weapons purely for the sake of inflicting terror, relishing in the sight of the dying.
She gasped and crawled faster, pushing herself out of the building towards the miner's headquarters. The ground was stitched with federation's weapons fire, magnet-driven bullets sending out large gusts of earth and chipped masonry into the sky and it was all so loud.
She yelped in surprise as she jumped back. She spit out a quick apology, not knowing how to make it stop as her limbs felt like they had currents running through them. Aisha spun and rolled to get away from the stitches dug into the ground, her body almost overwhelmed with terror as one of the Pirates behind them fell over from the impact of heavy defensive weapons.
As she tried to run, a cape-wearing and heavily built pirate in impressive looking armour riding atop a tank roared orders she didn't understand; but she recognised him, Weavel, a monster in the news videos mama and papa watched so often.
As Weavel pointed at the structure she darted away, one of the pirates accompanying the hovering tanks and mechs looking at the direction of her sound before dismissing it to carry out their orders. Tears were flowing out of her eyes like a water tap now. She didn't understand, why was this happening?
The headquarters was gone before she knew it, a drumroll burst of heavy munitions having reduced it to nothing before she had a look. Maybe the shoreline, she thought; seeing submersibles trying to dive into the safety of the waters. But this was no refuge, as the emergence of Ivax's head proved. Shaking the submersible caught in her jaws and crushing it open, she let out a deep, bellowing roar before she flopped back into the water, her jaws opening again and snapping around another submersible to drag it into the depths.
She screamed once again, her cries were more and more desperate as she tearfully begged for someone to save her.
A meeting with Ridley, Headquarters Ruins
"Mama! Papa! Where are you?" She pleaded before flinching as something crashed near her and almost fell over as people crawled out, most on fire and all dead in moments as a pack of pirates crawled over the crashed vessel and finished off anything left standing. She stumbled and picked herself up, ignoring the scrape to her knee as she repeated her call. She wanted to be with them, nothing else mattered.
But then she saw the monster, a great purple thing who had just left some with dead looks in their eyes and somewhat less mangled flesh than usual. Ridley seemed satisfied, obscenely so and he appeared to be twisting his claws around in a small person, seeing different screams they could make.
"What's your lowest octave hrm? I want to see what role you'd play in a choir. Your pet certainly wasn't much for singing." He said with an ugly, horrible laugh as they screamed with white hot agony.
"Oh come on now, you don't want to make too much noise in front of daddy would you?" He said, moving a corpse impaled through the barbed point on his tail in front of their faces and using his free hand to move their jaw up and down like a puppet.
"You gotta be strong Makel, you gotta fight through the pain. Don't be a wuss like your cat" He said, mimicking the voice perfectly.
"P-pleaaaaaaauuugggghhhh" Makel said before Ridley shoved their face into a fire and kept it there. He whistled a pleasant tune and tapped his foot to a beat while he waited before pulling the still screaming person back and taking a bite, severing their left leg. With a grin, he then chomped on the rest, mercifully ending the screaming.
She yelped and fell on her butt, whimpering and quivering as Ridley perked up and looked around before fixating on her and Aisha and giving a devilish smile.
"Oh isn't this your lucky day little girl? To meet me, the great Ridley; the Cunning god of Death, the Wind of Slaughter, the Holocaust bringer, and the Ashmaker, in a good mood too. You even brought a friend. I love the little furry animals you little monkeys collect." He said, licking his teeth and jutting his head forward.
"I...I'm Samus Aran...three years old...w...why are you here?" She stammered, shaking so badly she couldn't even stand on her own. His eyes seemed to almost light up, ah there's a name he's heard of...vaguely.
"Because your parents are very good at their jobs, but they need to pay their dues. I'm like the tax collector, I make sure everyone pays." He said, looking at the many colours of blood on his claws and licking them.
"C-c-can we be friends? Please...i-if you m-make them stop...e-even though we're di...different...we can be friends…" She said, shaking but smiling as she tugged at one of the fingers of his wings. He paused briefly. She touched him. She laid her hand on him, without malice, without threat. She tugged at him, seeking friendship and peace. She looked at him in the eyes, full of friendly love and empathy. She was scared, but she wanted to be his friend. He gave her an almost pitying face.
But inside, anger boiled like a supernova waiting to go off in a star's last moments.
She touched him. She got her filthy monkey paws on his carapace and scales. She approached him without paying the proper respect. She thought she could approach him of all people with her disgusting crowd-loving social habits and drag a mighty solitary predator such as him into such things. He could hear the soldiers thinking he'd gone soft and making his life difficult by not obeying him. He could see her and that stupid squirrel coming to him again and again with that stupid, awful smile.
But most of all, he felt the urge to hunt. She was prey, something to kill that couldn't fight back, something to satiate his scarlet urge to kill.
"Oh that's not going to happen." He sneered with a cold voice, his grin fading away entirely.
"W...why?" She quivered, disappointed.
"Heheheheheheh." He laughed, maniacally and without a hint of mirth as she nervously laughed herself, he seemed to double over, increasing the volume of his laughter to something far more unpleasant. Ear-splitting, like rapid-fire engine backfires as he forced himself to keep laughing. His eyes began to literally burn with anger as his laugh devolved into a hateful roar.
"BECAUSE YOU'RE A LITTLE HOLLERING APE WHO NEEDS TO SHUT UP!" He roared as he looked first to Aisha as the toddler tried to run away and spat out a supernova hot gout of flame from his maw and utterly vaporised her, her life ending with such startling swiftness she didn't even have enough time to scream as vaporising rock rose up, blow away by Ridley's wings while he turned towards Samus with a sneer of pure hatred.
"Oh don't worry, I'm not going to let that kill you." He said as he stomped towards her, flicking his tail through the necks of other bound captives he had lined up for his amusement, blood sputtering from sliced open necks to douse the ground in a rainbow of viscera.
"You and me need to talk a little, get to know each other." He said, almost cooing to her in a voice that Samus found far too friendly for the monster that he was.
Every step the dragon made towards her made the earth rumble as he loomed almost impossibly large over her. His body rose up to more than twenty meters as he stood fully upright. His hands reached out to the buildings to either side of him and crushed them into debris, sending them scattering all around Samus as Pyonchi made a high pitched squeak and the girl dumbly sputtered in terror.
"W-why are you d-doing this!?" She begged, she wanted...needed to understand him. The malice in his eye, the unbridled hate for someone he barely knew. The awful growl that made her body feel like it was turning to jelly.
She couldn't grasp such evil, just as Ridley had no capacity to appreciate her genuine kindness and compassion.
"Because in this universe, there are predators and prey. You, like all you little social cretins, are prey. I am a predator. I hunt, I kill, I terrorise. It's in my blood, just like it's in yours to scream, cry, and wet yourself." He chuckled with dark menace as he loomed ever nearer/
A dog barked at him, Aisha's dog, Nina, trying to find her. Big and black and fluffy. "And this thing's nature is to roll on its back and beg for treats from things like you. It's sad really, so dependent on others. I'm not dependent on anything, I don't even get sad." He mused as he examined the dog trying to protect Samus and Pyonchi, growling at Ridley who looked with his solid coloured eyes at them.
"I don't get it really, your "society" thing, I can't really. I'm good at pretending, lets me draw you out to play, but I'll never feel it. Why this thing, why you too, why do you care about each other? Hrm? When I hatched in a pool of lava my parents were long gone. Oh I had brothers and sisters too, but when there wasn't enough food in the Volcano I ate them." He said as he started to build fire within his body, orange heat forming in his mouth as he leisurely prepared his breath.
"M-maybe if your…mama and papa loved you…you'd und-under-understand." She stammered, trying to force a smile as she tripped over something slightly warm and soft that made an unpleasant crunch...furry digitigrade legs, vacant eyes on a head too big for the torso, half of a cat, stuck to half of a baby with a crude metal ring.
"Turns out that I'm not a good doctor after all." Ridley said, seeming to delight in the horror she felt as she realised what it was, the Dog still barking at him all the while before he roared at it to shut up.
"Now, normally I'd make this fun. You're such a sweet little thing after all. I could enjoy breaking you for so many, many years. But I have better things to do, Samus." He said, relishing in the way she quailed when he said her name. Oh, he knew who she was, who were her parents, how much they treasured her. He could see their despair, and it made him almost feel a drug high as he cackled like the devil himself.
"Oh I know all about you. Your parents are such big union people yes? War heroes too. Served in so many campaigns, so many shiny medals for being such good people. You see, I hate those sorts of people, the ones who help others. It reminds me of how disgusting you socialites are, relying on each other, somehow being able to stand each other." He, clearly mimicking someone else's mannerisms given how unnatural they looked on him.
" So time to disappear, monkey." He said as his mouth began to glow orange, a radiant heat that made her feel weak to her knees before a few shots of blue pulse rifle ovoids streamed into him followed by a stream of missiles. Shots like this could have cored old earth warships, but barely got Ridley to flinch as he swept his heat blast leftwards and fired.
"Augh! My eye!" Ridley screeched as he shook off some of the shrapnel and blinked his eye open again. It was intact, but that detonation was unpleasant. Tankbuster rockets.
Virginia's Last Stand, Headquarters Ruins
"Samus, run!" Virginia shouted, having fitted herself with one of the spare exomechs she could find. The mining ferrocrusher exomech, a great big yellow thing somewhere between crablike and humanoid in shape, personally modified by Virginia with the experience she and her former Mech Division veterans had obtained in another time and place, let loose with a cutting beam that pushed Ridley back with a sweeping cut.
"Mama!" She shouted.
"Just go!" She said.
Elendrina, joining with Virginia, boost jetted to the left to draw close to Ridley, tossing grenades at the beast while he tore through some of the Militia with seeker fireballs.. A high frequency monomolecular power blade was extended from the foreman's wrist and tried to stab into Ridley, but he simply shrugged the blow off and swatted her like an insect, sending her in a roll near Samus.
"Samus, your mom wants you to hide at the place Old Bird talked to you at. Near there, will be a panic room, they won't find you there." She said, pulling herself into a standing position and placing her hands on Samus' shoulder.
"That dog knows where it is…follow her and you'll be safe I promise." She said, saying something to Nina while Pyonchi curled into as tight of a ball as possible out of fright.
"I have to go help your mother, please…get out of here." She said as she cocked her arm cannon and rushed out, her squadmates emerging from cover with a chrome tank's cannon making a sound like if you hit sheet metal with a giant pick-axe and detonated every firework in a warehouse drawing Ridley's attention.
She threw herself to the ground, trying to crawl away as the Dog pushed her, barking at her to get away while Ridley grabbed at one of the frontier commandos trying to tag him with a sticky explosive, shielding shattering and armour splintering while the dragon gulped down some of the sweet flesh inside.
Virginia, quick to avenge a friend, rushed at him, striking at his legs with bolter fire to throw him off balance before tossing the wreckage of another tank, forcing him to catch it as he skidded backwards and tore it in half with a contemptuous twist of his arms.
"Where are my useless guards? Is Ivax trying a coup? Figures." Ridley sneered while the commandos opened fire on him, peppering his frame while he took off with a single flap. In another moment, his bioforce concentrated into purple rays from his eyes to supplement the barrage of seeking fireballs he spat out to engulf more of the Federation soldiery trying to rush him.
"Get away from my daughter!" She said, having the machine rush Ridley as quickly as possible, slamming its arms into him and throwing him into a shield wall that made him grunt briefly in annoyance, the tank joined by a platoon which struck him in synchronicity, Commandos and Militia troops trying their best to support the vehicles while she ducked away, letting heavy duty security robots tackle him and activate grav-clamps to try and keep him down until he smashed them.
The soldiers urged her to keep going, Commando, Militia, Marine, Army, United Nations Solar Defence Force; always trying to get her farther away while Ridley seemed offended that a morsel like her would escape.
They shelled him with artillery, they swarmed him with drones, they showered him in shots, and he had to cut through more than a few of their suicidally brave fliers while Virginia and whomever else brave enough to get close approached.
He wasn't hurt, but he was very, very angry, offended at the mortals attacking him without fear. And it wasn't fun if they weren't scared of him, prey should be scared, frightened prey was easy prey. And while his solitary predator nature meant he never grasped camaraderie, it also meant he had no real sense of bravery either. An easy fight was the only fight he wanted.
"His guards aren't here, come on, hit him with everything you've got!" One of the chrome armoured marines on permanent garrison duty shouted, arm cannon chattering with yellow sheathed mass-driver rounds and underslung missile fire.
More vehicles approached, a boxy walker with two legs and twin cannons shelled Ridley with gravity-shells to slow Ridley down as he tore into a militia squad, letting Virginia grab at him and suplex him headfirst into ground behind her.
Maybe…Samus thought…Maybe they could win, and make the nightmare go away? But Elendrina had told her of a special hiding place, and the thought of a missionw as the only thing keeping her gnawing fear easy, even as a man's head rolled in front of her, torn from its host.
"Your whole family line is going up in smoke you hear me! You're all dead!" He roared as he pushed through the industrial saws trying to cut into his flesh, grabbing them with his hands and pushing back with obscene strength. His fire breath tore through the tanks to the side, giving him extra space to act while he smashed the crusher into and through a skyscraper, the two exploding out the other side while the building began to collapse from his tail and wings sweeping through its weight-bearing columns.
Samus felt the ground shake as Ridley and Virginia tumbled, Virginia getting the upper hand as Ridley had to keep his tail busy throwing off melee-mechs
"Come on out of that can Aran! I'll break you in every little way a female ape can be broken." He roared with animalistic rage as he used his wings to push against the Crusher's arms. The cutting beam fired again, but his bioshielding let him push through before the retrofitted missile launcher fired a volley of tankbusters down his throat, getting him to cough out from the explosion.
Samus wanted her mother to win, she cheered her on mentally, but she knew mom would be mad if she didn't run. So run she did, trying to get as far away as she could manage, try to hide where nobody would look.
Tossed into another building with enough force to implode significant chunks of the structure, Ridley pried himself loose and slammed himself into the ground hard enough to create a flash of light and shockwave, crushing many of the remaining Federation troops while his claws ripped the walker in half.
Elendrina struck him with an imploder missile, the inducement and subsequent collapse of a vacuum bubble trying to crush him inwards with enough power to squeeze a skyscraper into a cell while debris accreted onto Ridley, trying to crush inwards as small as normal atomic matter could manage.
He was not injured, however, and tore his way through the shell accreted around him. Making another meteor slam into Elendrina to silence her and her remaining squad once and for all, he found himself tackled from behind by Virginia, trying to grind his face into the ground after activating the boosters.
Pushing himself off the ground and swatting her off of him with his tail, he looked for any other surprises that might still be out there. His keen eyes, made for hunting from space, looked at the fleeing Samus and roared in outrage as he tried to fire off one of his seeking fireballs, only to be met with anti-energy ladened ice missiles, this time to his cheek to encase him in an instant glacier.
Erupting outwards in a blast of steam and ice shards, his fury had grown cold and vicious, ordering his troops to steer clear.
"Fine, you first." He growled as his tail lashed out and jammed into the treads to immobilize the machine while he bit down at the cockpit to rapidly deplete the energy shielding. He grabbed at his opponent, trivially overpowering the mech to lift it into the air and slamming it back down into the earth.
Then he ground it into the asphalt across a street before pulling by the legs to swing it overhead and smash it into the dirt with crater-inducing force. Fire wreathed his fists as each punch went off like a bomb, driving his foe deeper and deeper in.
"What's the point of this? Why keep trying?" Ridley snarled as the Ferrocrusher used its thrusters to push away and catch him in a spinning slap to the face.
"For Samus." Virginia said simply as she released another barrage of missiles, a stun grenade following suit to try and overload his senses before she fired off grapple beams to slam him with the largest piece of debris she could find.
"What noble nonsense! I'll write that on your tombstone." Ridley cackled as he broke through her defence and rushed down to tackle her.
Virginia struck back, trying to crush Ridley's throat with the Ferrocrusher's proverbial ferrocrusher, but Ridley was through playing games as his purple throat proved unyielding. Even when he received an elbow to the face and was shoulder-checked, he was not moved, pulling open the grip on his throat and pushing through the gut punch that followed.
He overwhelmed the Ferrocrusher's shields with the aura of flame he conjured around himself and grabbed at its arms, flapping his wings to go above its saws and land behind the machine. Another missile barrage interrupted another fireblast, but he sunk his hind talons into the machine and lifted up high before dropping it once again, a red spiral beam of fire pushing the machine down after he yanked off the arms.
The crusher slammed into the ground like a meteor, and the impact threw Samus off of her feet as Ridley slammed back into the ground. But still, Virginia crawled out and fired from the wreckage, a power suit having protected her from death. Ridley sneered at the shots, even the grenades and missile bursts she used and bathed her in flame to exhaust her shielding before smashing her into the ground when she tried to fire off the dash jets to get airborne.
"I'm getting very tired of you Aran, but you are a soft, tasty thing." Ridley sneered as he used a claw to dig into the suit to try and cut it open from helm to navel without hitting her skin too much.
"So I'll enjoy this." He grinned.
"B-before or after my husband..blows your ship to hell?" She grunted through the pain as he cut open her face mask to leer at her face and started on her chest plate. That got him to stop, opening his eyes in shock, anger, and disbelief.
"...What!?" He said, pausing as he remembered one of the ships lifting off earlier. He looked up and let out a roar of anger. She laughed bitterly and in a fury he jabbed his thumb claw through her chest, getting a wet squelch and grunt out of her as a horrified Samus looked on.
"No! Mama!" She pleaded, reaching in her direction as Ridley threw himself into the air, the sonic boom of his takeoff throwing Samus off her feet.
Rodney's Sacrifice. Cargo bay of the Scourge of Heaven
Another Pirate fell over dead and disappeared with the flash of a mediporter, the reptilian missing most of his head as Rodney's Rangers and honestly, just about everyone they could pick up, made their way deeper into the ship.
They had come in with divisions, infiltrating through stolen Pirate ships, but he was pretty sure that he'd be lucky to staff a brigade with what was left of them.
"Rodney, it's been an honour…" Lisa said. She was an army scout attached to K-2L's garrison, her dull turquoise armour's orange visor unable to conceal the pride in her voice.
"We're almost there...don't tap out on me now soldier." He said, helping her up as Sergeant Kelvin, a Marine, looked behind them and then back to them.
"They'll remember you for this Aran...and God almighty, I hope the statue you get is worthy of you. If it sucks…I'm gonna be very disappointed from beyond the grave." He said, giving an all-clear signal as the last of them pushed through the door as the demolition troopers set off their charges.
"Almost at the finish line now Aran…just once more into the breach." Demolition Specialist Stellndae said, relief in her voice.
He knew that there was no way out, but his destination would be worth it. He looked around and finally saw his prize, the primary Afloraltite storage holds within the cavernous and dimly lit interiors of this hellship. The ceiling was high, and the glowing crystals were scintillating in the dull light.
More pirates jumped down, crashing all around them and standing up like a horde of demons. Knowing where they were, they were cautious about firing, wary as the Federation troopers pointed their guns back at them.
"+Enforcer Ridley, we have Rodney and his intrusion force surrounded.+" One reported.
"+Then kill him already!+" Ridley roared over the line as he appeared in the hangar, roaring with unbelievable fury as he looked around. His smug look now replaced with blood boiling anger, visible on the monitors Ridley had throughout the ship to display his glory to his lackeys.
The reptilian leader primed the battle hammer blaster while Rodney reached for something on the side of his light blue security armour.
"The line ends here, monkey. You can't escape this ship." The Crustacean pirate, seemingly second in command growled.
"You don't really think I came here with an exit plan do you?" He said as he primed the quantum catalyst explosive.
"...What are you doing! You'll get us all killed!" The Reptilian barked in horror.
"You'll never see your daughter again! Is that what you want!?" Ridley roared over the communication feed as he stormed through the ship, trying to find where his target was.
"She'll be all alone on that miserable rock and die with wild animals gnawing on her bones! You think you're saving her!?" Ridley howled.
"From you, yes," Rodney said, the Pirates firing in a panic at him, cutting through the Federation's bravest as they gave Rodney all the time he needed.
"For Samus…" He said, Ridley's eyes widening as he tried instead to run, tearing his way through the hull as Rodney's hands activated the primed explosive. He threw aside pirates who asked him what he was doing and let them be sucked into the void of space as he clawed his way through a viewport, but too late.
The explosion began with small, stabbing lances of light piercing through the hull of the dying ship but quickly bloomed outwards. The Afloraltite catalysed in a zero point energy burst, and a detonation like a new sun reduced the Scourge of Heaven to free-floating plasma, the remnants of the Scourge's multi-layered shielding containing the blast before it could do any further damage even as the core of Ridley's fleet perished in the process.
Ridley tried to drive himself as fast as he could go, but the energy wave engulfed him and shrapnel slammed into him, howling outrage as he burned and fell towards the planet, the fiery raiment of re-entry surrounding him as he hit the ground like a meteor.
Aftershock, Gaela Plaza
The other pirates stopped and looked on in horror as the explosion tore the very heart out of Dragon Fleet in one fell swoop. Only the efforts of the Scourge's own shields stopped the blast from devastating the planet itself, but fragments from the ship and fleet were already starting to rain down on the surface below. The remaining fleet began to open fire upon the Debris, seeking to prevent landfall by any means, but the mission had been a failure.
"Withdraw with what afloraltite we have gathered. Our chain of command is gone and many of our strongest ships were caught in that blast. We will need to regroup elsewhere and sort out the holes in our order of battle." Grand Marshal Weavel ordered, snapping his fingers to the nearby pirates.
He could hear them, blaming him, wondering whose heads High Command was going to want on a silver platter for this catastrophe. He could forget about advancing his career now really...he needed to think about the more immediate concern of justifying to High Command why he shouldn't be demoted. Especially if Geoform 187 didn't survive. A hideous death would be the most generous thing High Command would give him if the Enforcer was lost.
"But sir…Enforcer Ridley was reported crashing back to the planet."
Then there was hope at least. Ridley could endure a great deal as long as he was given the opportunity to regenerate. But with the Scourge of Heaven destroyed and most of the Inferno Pack's first fleet reduced to drifting plasma and more exotic particles they wouldn't be able to stick around. The Federation would send in the army or the navy or send out a call for some hotshot freelance space hunters and sweep them up. If Ridley was alive after that, he could afford to wait for a stealth extraction. He wouldn't be happy about it, but right now Weavel couldn't care less about what Ridley wanted.
"I said withdraw! We will dispatch commandos to retrieve the Enforcer or whatever remains he has left. For now...take what is left and head home. Examine what salvage there is to be had of the ship and haul it, scuttle the rest before the vultures steal our science." He said bitterly.
"Yes Grand Marshal." The pirate responded.
"Statement: This outcome is...unfortunate. Prediction: High Command will be displeased." AAE-13 said as they stomped into view.
Understatement of the cycle. With good fortune the Despot wouldn't have Weavel's carapace flayed off his boiled flesh and mounted behind him in his office. Hopefully he would be...understanding of the unforeseen circumstances, especially if the right scapegoats could be fed to High Command to save his career. Hrm...who had died in the blast that wouldn't be alive to contradict the narrative he was already concocting in his head, he wondered?
"You don't think Ridley is dead, do you? Might be a new spot opening up in the Enforcers." Corvus said, landing on her feet next to Weavel as he dusted off his pauldrons.
Hah as if anyone here was going to be considered for promotion.
"No, but it'll be years before High command lets him live this one down, or any of us for that matter." Weavel growled. And years before he was entrusted with a command this prestigious he reminded himself. The Inferno Pack's star in the eyes of High Command was already sinking and he could already see the smug looks on the general staff of Kraid's Jade Carnage or Draygon's Abyssal Demise troops or any number of other such famed military formations, mocking him for this failure.
"...A pity, I had grown fond of it." Zenkin said, folding their arms behind themselves.
"Graaaahhh...the large ships have the best water facilities." Ivax howled as she beached herself and shook her head in displeasure.
Well, at least she made it out alright. Two enforcers WIA would really be an unthinkable black mark on Weavel's career.
"Enough...get your forces and follow orders." Weavel snarled.
Soon enough, the remaining pirates grabbed what they could and angrily sacked what was left before they returned to their ships and shot off into the heavens. And eventually the flames burnt themselves out as they always did, and all that was left was ash; and a little girl stumbling through it, not sure where to go. All alone on an entire planet.
Samus' Logbook
Warships: Destroyed: Confederacy of Dismor: Inferno Pack: Dragon Fleet: Mega-Capital Category: Scourge of Heaven
Ridley's longest-serving flagship, the Scourge of Heaven was built at considerable cost; financed through a spree of looting and assembled at the primary Shipyards of the rogue Corporation Todmor Industries to be a dominating force in space. Able to obliterate planets and cause disruption to stars with ease, the Scourge of Heaven was infamous for being nearly invincible under the command of Strategos Zenkin and Enforcer Ridley; carving a path through space wherever it went. With a massive crew complement including billions of ground assault troops and a massive arsenal centred around a zero-point energy cannon able to outmatch the output of supernovas, the Scourge of Heaven could single-handedly crush resistance across entire sectors, and was always accompanied by Dragon Fleet, an infamous naval formation that had never lost a battle under Zenkin's command and was considered one of the most dangerous naval task forces in the universe. The ship's reign of terror was finally brought to an end by the sacrifice of Rodney Aran; costing the lives of enormous numbers of pirates in one fell swoop.
Samus' Notes: I suppose blowing up space pirate capital ships really does just run in the blood for me.
Planets: Arada Galaxy: Macha Cluster: Human Habitable: Galactic Federation Controlled: Visited: K-2L (Part 2)
K-2L was later attacked by the forces of the space pirate enforcer Ridley and the leading fleet of his Inferno Pack. The destruction rendered most of the planet uninhabited and was presumed to have wiped out all of its colonists until the re-emergence of Samus Aran ten years after the attacks. Debris from the Scourge of Heaven and its accompanying ships has formed into an impressive ring system around the planet, with a permanent Naval base dedicated to ensuring that the debris do not impact the planet and to scavenge the remains for potential salvage. Resettlement efforts have been underway, but the ruins of the previous settlers are left standing out of respect. A museum dedicated to the exploits of Samus Aran serves as the planet's primary attraction despite her finding the concept of such a thing to be flustering.
Samus' Notes: I just don't enjoy the sort of hagiography that museums dedicated to single people usually participate in. I also think it glosses over the other one and a half billion people who lived there. And for one thing, I'd appreciate it if they stopped trying to find excuses to put "Artistic nudes" of myself up. Most of them aren't even accurate. I've never had red or green hair as far as I know.
Individuals: Deceased: Human: Federation: Civilian: IWA: Miners: Rodney Aran
A mining foremen, former marine scout, and geologist, Rodney Aran came to work with the Sirian Mining Collective after graduating from the Domai Academy of the Physical Sciences. Marrying Virginia Aran shortly after graduating, the two would be sent to settle K-2L to extract its rich Afloraltite deposits before the Fuel Gel boom inevitably crashed the value of Afloraltite. The two would have a child named Samus Aran, and had plans to conceive a pair of twins named Saren and Sean. Rodney would die shortly after Samus' third birthday in a final raid on Ridley's flagship, detonating the stolen Afloraltite and much of Ridley's fleet in the process. He was posthumously award the Quasar circlet; the highest non-military honour the Federation can offer.
Samus' Notes: I'm not a miner myself, but I'll always be a miner's daughter. I like to think he's proud of me, I'm certainly proud of him.
Individuals: Deceased: Human: Federation: Civilian: IWA: Miners: Virginia Aran
A geologist and a former marine mech operator, Virginia was hired by the Sirian Mining Collective following the publishing of her thesis on Afloraltite detection. Originally having known Rodney from their grade school days, she married him after graduating and would join him on K-2L. She would become the mother of the more well known Samus Aran and was planning to raise two more children with vague plans for a fourth. Noted as a devoted parent and wife, she was also a fierce proponent of worker organization, and was the one to introduce her husband to the IWA. She would meet her end shortly after her daughter's third birthday, utilising a mining mech to delay Ridley as long as possible to prevent him from realising that his ship was being set up for sabotage. Though outmatched, she held him off long enough for their plan to be realised and died from fatal lacerations. Her remains were interned in a shallowly dug grave by Samus, and her grave remains a memorial site.
Samus' Notes: Wish you were here.
Individuals: Alive: Human (Hybrid): Federation: Civilian: Freelance: Samus Aran (Part 1)
Samus Aran is sometimes regarded as perhaps the most important human to have ever been born. Certainly she's considered as such among those within Federation territory. Born to Rodney and Virginia Aran, the young girl was noted for her independent streak, adventurous curiosity, extremely quick learning, boisterous and physical nature, and a loving, compassionate nature from a very early age. Quicker on her feet and to learn than most, she was expected to have a bright future almost immediately. Perhaps most curiously is that the Chozo took an almost immediate interest in her fate from the moment they became aware of her existence; something they extend to almost no other humans. Assumed to be dead at first by the Federation, she would resurface ten years later, the last of her family but also the first of a new union of human and chozo.
Samus' Notes: As I said, I don't really enjoy the sort of hagiography that people tend to draw around the famous. But, spirits be willing, I hope that the image people draw up around me can inspire others to do what's right. People shouldn't rely on heroes to change the world, but if I can show people that it's possible; then I'll have done good.
Author's Notes: For longer legacy chapters, I'll be diving them into marked subchapters. Newer chapters will generally be more reasonably lengthed, but fully breaking up the old mega-chapters requires a lot of busywork and I feel would unfairly bump me over and over.