Hardball
Prodigal Program, Zellemite City, Planet Gyldaine, Suramil System, Andromeda Galaxy, Popular Republican Union of Esdemir, Galactic Federation: 5th of April, 1,986,014.
Samus was swift and deadly as one might expect; the swarms of drones around her barely even getting a chance to respond before she took out each one in turn. She limited herself to the basic essentials of her equipment, finding that there wouldn't be enough challenge in simply bringing the entirety of her arsenal.
Even then, it was more than enough for the Varia suit clad young woman to make a fool out of the other team. Right, team, she was doing power-sports to get her used to working with her dorm-mates. And so far well, she was enjoying herself, feeling that competetive spirit soar as she tensed herself, analysing the field.
This was her first game, and she had to show everyone what she was made of. While a private person who didn't like the limelight, she didn't want people to think she wasn't capable or was weak. She had her honour as a champion and her pride as an explorer at stake, she couldn't and wouldn't half-ass it even if she was playing with a handicap.
And now...yes, she had the ball right now; her twists bringing her out of the way of the tachyon form of Glesgik; a star player of the enemy team; senses alerting her to his retro-chronal movement and letting her adjust herself to not be where he was trying to tackle her. He was fast of course, she knew how to deal with fast; and she dodged each of his thirty-seven attempted tackles easily before throwing her hand right where his neck would be next.
Glesgik choked as he collapsed back into baryons, the ammonia-drinking mantid-like silicate's suit clicking as his rebreather worked. "Not fast enough." Samus said before slamming her boots into him and firing off the thrusters to throw him back to the ground and once again into the air, vaulting over a drone swarm with her limbs tucked in for her backflip, bouncing off of ten more with her suit and supernatural senses translating the displaced air's movements into more conventional sound while she bounded across the stadium.
"Samus, come on, I'm open!" Ian said, trying to shove his way past Ssregil; an Amiliak whose Natuloid like form extended tentacles in an effort to grab him; green limbs wrapped in flexible protective gear of a sea-green hue held at bay by a wall of telekinetic force. But Ssregil's three tonne form began to shimmer with lightning, attempting to press through the barrier.
She took a look in Ian's direction, seeing Kreatz met with Sevrin who was faster, stronger, and smarter than he was, already moving to intercept unless she countered. She ran the numbers in her head, Ian would have an easier time passing it to Kreatz than herself; and so less time than it took for a tachyon computer to translate a key input into text, she calculated exactly where to throw.
Samus grabbed at one of the Ciclytor drones controlled by Aktra; one of Sevrin's Nyakojin companions; and spun it with her grapple beam, throwing it away from the mechanical being and then flung the orb in her hand towards Sevrin before rushing into him and trying to tackle him.
Sevrin wasn't quite as strong as Arne was, but he was still a fellow inheritor, a peer. She'd have to take this seriously. Her speedbooster activated and she shoved into him with exponentially building force that forced him to release his boots' grip on the ground to avoid damaging it.
Just enough of a window for her to fire off her grapple beam, pulling herself into the ground and bringing down him with her to give Kreatz the space he needed to make the pass.
With Montauk trying to put Lydia off guard with a shockwave inducing stomp, Yramil was free to form a rune of flame beneath Ssregil to push them back with a sheet of plasma so that he could break off.
Ian shunted himself from one point to the next, throwing up a curtain wall of force to block off Glesgik before he could blitz him and then wrapping it around the Skentil so that his tachyon tackles wound just bounce around in the orb, sprinting towards the end-line on the other side of the arena; Montauk tackling into the massive form of the mechanical Aktor before its pincers could swing around and catch him.
Ian knew Adam was watching and couldn't help but flick his eyes towards the observer booth where his brother sat. That seemed to make him redouble his efforts, pushing himself harder and using his telekinesis like rocket thrusters to shoot past Aktra's machine swarm, expanding a bubble of force to push away the nearest threats until he saw Lydia charging up something with a corona of energy and Sevrin, shoving Kreatz aside like a ragdoll before landing a paralyzer shot on Montauk.
Some of the extras on the team were similarly bulldozed by Sevrin, including a teleporter who found that Sevrin could overpower their grapple and an Electrokine that got shoulder checked into the ground .
"Oh shit." He murmured.
Samus landed next to him, keeping pace with him virtually without effort with her left hand offered to him. "Come on, pass it to me, I'll get it over!" She said, throwing herself in Sevrin's way.
"Confident! I like it." Sevrin laughed as she jumped over a sweep kick and shot a stun missile to intercept his paralyser blast, forcing him to redirect the missile into the ground.
Ian shook his head and jumped over Aktra and Lydia before either of them could snag the sphere out of his hands while he looked towards the rapidly moving goal circle.
"Ian come on! What are you doing?!" Samus shouted, temper flaring briefly as Malkovich stubbornly blink-jumped away from her to prevent her from interfering in his shot while Samus was forced to hold back Sarak; the nyakojin boy's pyrokinetics sweeping over the field with heat to surpass stars and forcing Aran to step in the way, absorb the blow and then yank Sarak in for a headbutt to toss him back to the ground.
"Sorry Sammy but gotta do this myself." Ian said as he shot the ball like a projectile with a TK throw.
Ssregil slid through a crack in space and engulfed the ball in their tendrils, pulling it closer towards their body and then hovering away quickly while Samus let out a groan of frustration.
"Ian what were you thinking?!" She protested loudly about ready to start launching into an explosive rant until she felt every hair on the back of her neck stand on its end, her eyes widening while she got that raptaptap sensation of imminent danger crawling up her spinal cord. Her grapple beam launched from her left hand and then tagged Ian's suit; pulling him back as he was about ready to respond, right before a crackling invisible scythe blade swept over where his head would have been had he not been moved out of the way.
The whole of the arena's onlookers took a moment to process what had happened before a distinctive phrase in a familiar language hit Samus' ears, her heart almost seeming to stop while all other sounds faded into the distance, all other concerns melting away while that fire in her chest began to roar to life, her teeth grinding and her bones aching with hate and fear. "Suntor Ghrak, Ivat!"
Space Pirate tongue.
Samus felt something hotter than the jets of a quasar pulse through her veins. A potent mix of emotions, fear, disgust, confusion, sadness, hate, worry, but above all else was rage. Anger burned in her in a way that somewhat increased the temperature around her, despite her lack of skill with such esoteric arts; she was so mad that reality itself was starting to warp beneath it slightly so as to produce heat from nothing. It was poison, her veins constricting, her pupils shrinking, her mouth opened in a feral snarl and her heart shifting into a strange flow.
Fire was around her vision, curls and tendrils of heat and smoke. She could smell that pork stink in the air, and hear the faint screams of the dying in the distance. Not of the people here and now, but there and then. Gore curled along her periphery vision, her trembling hands feeling the sensation of the damned trying to drag at it, to plead for help that could not arrive. Because she wasn't strong enough, because she couldn't help them. Because she wasn't there.
The first of the pirate strike team did not have the time to register her movement. His tachyonic movement tracker had not finished its readout. She had already grabbed it by the head in a grip that would strain the coherency of anything resembling normal matter and she had already had a shot prepared.
Fully charged, a sphere of death and multi-energy of many colours pulsated, glowed, and released into the pirate as its polyshields were reeling from her impact. The burst popped multiple layers of the pirate's defences, and her wrist blade did the rest in a clean motion; its quench field nullifying the most fundamentals of the pirate's binding structures which, when paired with her brute strength, allowed her to simply carve it apart.
The act of killing her very first sophontic being did not register with her. More needed to die. She needed to kill them. Demons could not be so incapable of good as these monsters who had dare bring themselves here of all places, where she was supposed to be safe. Where her friends lived. Where people she wanted to keep safe thought they could be at peace. Where the world's troubles were supposed to be checked at the door.
Why were they here? Why did they want to come here? It doesn't matter. It never mattered. They serve the Confederacy, they will die. That was all that mattered to Samus, that was all that would ever matter to her as she could feel her throat trembling. She was screaming?
It didn't matter. People were trying to talk to her, she heard them, she knew what they were saying, she could remember it all. But none of it took in because her mind had shut out all distractions from her overriding goal. There would be no mercy, but there would be no cruelty. No excessively gruesome deaths, no drawn-out demises, no torture. She just had to make them stop. Stop being alive, kill them in a way that their mediportation systems couldn't save them from at least being hurt by. Make them pay, make them all pay.
She wasn't saying anything. She was making sounds, but she wasn't saying anything. Words were not important, death and violence were important, fury and blood were important, vengeance and justice were important. Words and reason? They didn't matter, they couldn't matter. Not with them, never with them.
She didn't even register when she stepped onto blood, what was some Space Pirate blood after all the blood they shed? After the oceans of blood she had to wade through?
Gore smeared off of the polyshielding of her suit, she didn't register it. She didn't care. She couldn't care.
The space pirates were saying things, surprise? They didn't expect this sort of violence? Why didn't they? Didn't they come here to inflict this sort of violence? Why be so surprised when it comes back for them? They had to know she was here. Did they just not believe in the might of an inheritor warrior burning with the fires of holy vengeance and quivering with the thirst for justice?
These questions didn't matter. Anymore than the last words of one of the pirates when her fist stopped hitting the scorched shadow below where its head used to be. She had killed it a punch ago, but she couldn't stop.
She could hear her name being called for. With fear? With worry? Why would they be afraid for her? She was supposed to be scared for them. They were all so fragile, they needed her. They all needed her. She had to be strong enough, for each and every one of them. They didn't have to cry, they didn't have to be afraid. She was here, she would keep them safe. Every last one of them.
The dead piled up, things were happening, she paid them no heed. The world may as well have been tunnel visioned and completely silent. All she saw were ghosts, pleading for help, for justice, for vengeance. Ghosts of the past and the future. Of the victims of yesterday and of tomorrow. Of here and countless other places.
The fire was everywhere in her vision. The screaming wouldn't stop. The pig stink of burnt flesh and the metallic scent of blood wouldn't leave her nostrils. She wasn't sure if she was breathing. She didn't care.
Slick with blood, everything was so bloody. So much gore, so much pain, so much suffering. No, no more. She would make it stop. Nobody would cry anymore. No more ravenous teeth would sink into the flesh of the weak and the helpless. No more slaughters, no more massacres. No more K-2Ls.
She could see the Dragon in the corner of her eye, its hideous shriek laugh loud in her ears, mocking words ringing in the distance. The slayer of her mother, the beast who made her father pay the ultimate price. The cunning god of death, the burning talon of high command, and demon marshal of a trillion trillion spirals. Ridley, where was he? Why didn't he show himself? Why won't he fight her?
Why why why why. Why did he have to be such a coward? She hated him, she had to kill him, to hear him scream the same way he made everyone scream. To feel his bones break beneath her fingers, to see his flesh mangled and ruined. Why did papa have to die to kill him? To deny Samus a chance to avenge mama?
...She was...getting mad at papa...she realised faintly, then felt something holding her arm back, strong. She blinked, saw one of the monsters sprawled, arms aloft, begging. Pleading.
She could hear voices.
"STOP! SAMUS! HOLY SHIT STOP!" Ian?
She was about to drive her cannon through the head of the pirate even as it was begging for its life. There, Sevrin, Montauk, Lydia, Yramil, and Kreatz were trying to use every ounce of strength they had, physical or esoteric.
All were straining with Sevrin to stop her from dealing the death blow to the pirate and its injured comrades who were surrendering.
...Surrendering...she was about to kill...
She remembered the one space pirate penal legionary, who refused to shoot her on K-2L, who looked at her and took pity on her...they were why she was alive now. And she was about to...
No...no...she couldn't...
The world's sounds rushed to the forefront again, the crimson mist of painful yesteryears brought to her mind's eye faded away. She was back in a gymnasium, there was carnage everywhere, people were scared, taking cover, and there were some weapons pointed at her too. Federation Police forces in their distinctive blue-yellow power suits accompanied by Marines in Chrome; all of them looking as afraid of her as they were of the pirates.
She shuddered, looking to one of the police officers who let out a yelp of terror and accidentally gave the mental command to fire. The RKKV projectile spat out from the arm-carbine incinerating harmlessly as it expended itself on her defences. She wouldn't need her armour to take shots like that anyway. But she looked at where she was shot regardless, having not bothered to avoid it.
...She scared them.
Everyone was scared of her.
"Samus...it's okay...please...you can stop...God please stop..." Ian was crying, like he had just seen a nightmare. The crack in his voice made her feel bad.
"I..." She managed, pulling back her cannon as the other two inheritors let out sighs of relief when she stopped.
She paused, looked around. This wasn't...she didn't mean...she...
"I'm sorry..." She croaked, shame filling her heart. Worse than anything before this point.
Some hours passed, words were exchanged with authority figures. Concerned ones, some fearful ones, Samus was just kind of numb to it all. She flinched at the jaundiced colours of fear radiating from the people who looked at her like a monster. And the azure tinge of admiration was sullied darker tones in the colours of emotion that regarded the sheer violence of her attack as something to uphold that she could see with her mind's eye. She wasn't as experienced with it as her elders, but it was still there.
She was curled into the Morph Ball, a way to distance herself from the problems of the world in its disembodied third-person point of view. Here she could just think to herself, wonder in her mind what had gone wrong and when. They were Space Pirates right? She wasn't upset that she killed them...but she couldn't find joy in how she did it.
She would remain in that curled up form, letting people mingle around, speak to others, try to ignore her or keep their distance from her. She didn't really bother committing the conversations the police had with her to her thoughts, she just went on autopilot then. Nothing to worry about, nothing to concern herself with.
But her thoughts would be interrupted when Sevrin sat next to her.
"Hey, sorry...Samus, are you doing alright? You've got everyone here worried" He said, his voice trying to be cheerful despite everything while he turned his eyes towards her through the visor of his helmet.
"Uh...uhuh." She murmured, uncurling from her alternate form and hugging her knees to her chest, still craving the security she felt in her shell.
"Radiance knows I have my issues with the Krikens, but you genuinely went into a berserker state…how long have you had these anger issues?" He said, perking up beneath his helmet before stopping himself and shaking his head.
"Sorry, irrelevant I know. But well, I was taught that we're a social species so you know, we should probably make friends while we're here and all right?" He asked, gesturing towards her and then the room in general.
"Yeah I was...taught that too." She responded, still not quite ready for feeling more cheerful at the moment.
"Heh well, Chozo huh. Can't believe some people thought they were extinct but well, probably same group as those who thought the Ylla had gone off or the N'kren were completely asleep..." He said, trying to make light with an only tangentially related conversation that got a long stare from the blonde next to him.
"...My apologies, that wasn't funny." He said, clearing his throat.
"Well, I thought it was a little funny.." Samus responded, trying a little smile beneath her helm that got a small laugh out of Sevrin.
"Ah good! It would reflect poorly on me if you thought me to be uncouth..." He exhaled with a sharp wheeze followed by a loud laugh, pounding at his chest and letting the stress out all at once in a one handed gesture that earned him a look of curiosity from young Aran.
"I know I might be intruding but, do you have a moment to talk? I think I've gotten pretty decent with it thanks to Agafya." He said. A lot of people tended to just look at her and decide whether or not she wanted to talk to them based on how she moved herself around, the fact that he felt the need to ask at least made him feel more relatable to her.
She gave it a bit of thought. Did she want to speak of it? It was shameful yet...if she just kept quiet would it not come back later? But could he really offer help? Especially when she was supposed to be the one offering people that help. What would they say if they saw her needing to be vulnerable like this, after doing what she did. Would they think she was crazy, defective?
No...she wasn't crazy. She wasn't defective. She was strong, she could hold the world on her shoulders and hold her head up high. She wouldn't back down from this, not like a coward.
The words didn't want to leave her throat, she could feel muscles in her neck wanting to squeeze shut to block them. She could sense the desire of her brain to forget what she wanted to say, to distract itself with passing stray thoughts. She could feel her mouth threatening to dry itself, to make saying it more uncomfortable.
Her body was clamming up, but she wouldn't let it hold her back. She needed to get this out, and she let the air flow through her naturally, imagining the world becoming a quieter, stiller place to see only what she needed to. To control her sensory inputs so that she wasn't overwhelmed with all the noise and bedlam of the world, just her and Sevrin
"Yeah...I'm ready." She said, letting the words come out with her meditative exhale while he gave a strange one-hand clapping and fist pump motion that she figured was a celebration of success. Perhaps it was an Ylla thing?
"Perhaps it may not be the most legal thing to do, but honour demands that we at least try something, and we may as well learn what the Pirates wanted to try. " He said, grinning beneath his helmet
"I...yes. I'd like to hear you out." Samus responded, figuring that this would probably be her best bet to at least put some names to the senseless violence that had just happened.
"How did you get it?" She asked, only for Sevrin to wriggle his fingers around and shrug.
"Not going to reveal my secrets here where people can hear. But if we get somewhere a bit more...hidden I think I can tell you." He said, looking around, noting all the people around and fully aware that equipment could easily pick out the tiniest whisper from any of the ongoing conversations.
Samus thought about it, and then sent a few quick empathic packets of information, the idea of a place, the sensations associated with it.
"Alright." He clapped his hands together as they peeled off those they could from the ongoing investigation to find this hidden place, or rather, her bedroom which she had carefully screened for any means of monitoring and ensured was soundproofed. There wouldn't be anything going on in class, not for a while after this incident, so she could bounce out of the gymnasium with a clear conscience.
Heart to Heart
Sevrin quirked his brow a bit, clearly surprised at simply being allowed into someone's bedroom, but seemed to quickly accept it based on the shift in his expressions to that typical easy smile.
"So what's the scoop?" Ian asked, prompting myriad eyes to flick to him and stare at him in confusion.
"You know, the deets?" He continued, only continuing to get blank looks before sighing in defeat.
"Ugh, what have you got Sevrin?" He amended.
"Well, the space pirates were leaked info that some pretty important people would be coming here shortly. Someone who's been chatting with the Krikens too as well as a third party." He said, folding his arms and taking on a more serious tone of voice. The very way he said Kriken was full of a smouldering contempt, saying it like a curse.
Samus' blood ran cold and then hot, surprise and anger mixed in her gut for a powerful concoction of negative emotion as she leaned in more closely,
"What could they want with the Space Pirates? The Empire and the Confederacy hate each other." Kreatz said as he helped himself into the room, clearly unable to stop himself from listening.
"Do you even know if they're co-conspirators?" He continued.
"If you would let me connect the dots, my friend…" Sevrin sighed, Ian looking back at Samus repeatedly before whispering to Montauk. Samus could hear that they were talking about his concerns for her, but he seemed aware of Samus' eavesdropping and switched tracks to telepathy to make it harder for her to listen in. She could have found a way around that but...if that was what he wanted.
"Arne at the Magnus Academy was recently attacked by a Kriken hitman and reported seeing some sort of shapeshifter," Samus murmured, letting the projectors in the room conjure up a hard-light board for her to start illustrating out her point, drawing Arne and his friends at one school, while her and the others were at this one; then drawing out the symbols for the Confederacy of Dismor and the Imperial State of Arkatika; then lines of connection linked by a question mark.
"And from what Agafya has said, she's gotten reports of Weavel's troops moving into the Styrmandin Galaxy to fight Hell Lancer Mercenaries, and that galaxy's within ten megaparsecs from here," Sevrin said.
"Arne said that he encountered Trace in the dreamscape, we have evidence that Weavel's forces are involved in this..." Samus let her thoughts run wild for a bit, running through possibilities and murmuring them aloud until Montauk harrumphed after Ian spat out his drink all over Yramil's face to Aelva's loud displeasure at the mention of Trace and Weavel; coughing and gagging for a bit while Lydia tried to backpat the fluid out of his lungs.
"I really need to ask, are you suggesting we do something about this...ourselves? Because that's insane." Kreatz interrupted.
"If four inheritors are off handling it, I think they can manage," Montauk said.
"It's their job, and if they can't there's the military or freelancers. What are we going to do? Charter a ship and fly up to Trace's throneroom or Weavel's general staff?" Ian said, straightening himself further and then folding his arms.
"No, we're not stupid...of course not," Samus said, unsure if that was a rhetorical question but not willing to let such an insinuation that she'd be so foolish just slide.
The thoughts of the room were quickly interrupted by the entrance of one more unexpected guest, clad in dress uniform and a quick look of relief towards Ian and Lydia and then concern towards Samus before duty reasserted itself and he straightened himself out.
"Adam? What are you doing here?" Samus asked.
"You are planning to take this into your own hands, aren't you?" He asked, though one glance told her that he already knew the answer.
"I won't let people die finding the truth when we can get the answers without anyone being hurt!" Samus responded, puffing out her chest, after what she had seen, no she couldn't let other people just walk into that sort of meatgrinder.
"Hey, uh, you're here to talk sense into everyone right?" Kreatz asked hopefully, a small smile on his face.
"There are some things I need to ask of you though, as a military officer. It's something only you and Sevrin can answer." He said.
"Ordinarily, I would never countenance involving people your age, no matter the ability level, in something like this. But these aren't normal circumstances. Sevrin, you told me earlier that there were links between the Pirates here and the Krikens at Magnus, yes?" He said, briskly moving conversational tracks to direct his focus to the blond boy.
"Yes. At least two other parties are involved. Rantik signals and Hell-Lancers, the latter of which seem to be connected to Agafya's shapeshifter, and all of which connect to the Styrmandin galaxy" He said, his confidence ebbing and flowing like waves at a beach as he chewed his lower lip and shook his head.
"Ahahahah did you say the Rantik? As in the Swarm?" Lydia laughed, but Samus could tell it was a strained, sarcastic laugh.
"And people that can block Fed-Military cracking?!" Ian added.
"It'd have to be someone with Progenitor encryption," Samus murmured as she added to her diagram. The symbol used to represent Rantik occupied space found its way onto her drawing, and a link flowed into the unknown figure.
"Keep in mind that I am not asking you to help beyond this. I just want you to take a look at these signals we intercepted here, and report as soon as you've managed that." Adam said, passing a small chit of data storage to Samus.
He looked to Ian and Lydia for a moment, the twins flinching a bit at his attentions before straightening themselves a bit, Lydia trying to stand at attention while Ian attempted to triple down on a new slouch.
"What? Going to lecture me, bro?" Ian said the contraction of brother striking Samus as a bit odd for someone from a military family.
"No, I am, however, asking you to stay safe. and for once take things seriously." Adam replied.
"Hey, maybe I am and you just don't know how I cope?!" Ian snapped somewhat angrily, lashing an arm out and almost starting a build-up of telekinetic power before stopping himself and gritting his teeth before balling his fist.
"Ian is this re-" Adam started before Ian scoffed, Samus recoiling at the rancour she sensed rolling off the boy.
"Hey, you want to talk about something right Adam? How about how it's never the time to talk about how I feel bro? How about that gravity god damn lensing sized war wasp nest in the building huh?" He interrupted, pushing his sunglasses up and maintaining a cold but hard demeanour.
"You come here, unload all..." he said before gesticulating across the room "THIS! On us, on Samus, on Lydia, on ME! And you didn't so much as ask "hey Ian, are you okay?" Huh? Is that your take away from what Mom and Dad taught us? You already told her that she can't get out there and do what she wants to so why butter her up with how important this busywork bullshit is?!" He continued, not shouting, but snappy all the same, making sure Adam didn't get any room to talk and seething through his teeth.
"Like, cool, you found a way to maverick your way out of regs for all your lectures about proper procedure. Fine, whatever spools your N-drive.." He said, about ready to keep talking before Samus let out a harrumph that would have taken the wind out of the sails of a herd of elephants.
"STOP!" She barked, grinding her teeth and pushing air through them, in and out as she breathed with tensed irritation.
"Both of you just...stop arguing!" she just about screamed her reply, all eyes and optics in the room dead focused on her. A pregnant silence fell across the room, and the bubbling cauldron of emotions stilled to an uneasy flattened anticipation.
"You're family! You should try to get along better! That's what family does!" She said, snatching the data chit out of Adam's hand before he could say anything else.
"And once I've gotten what I need from this, I'm going to take care of this entire mess!" She shouted.
She huffed and puffed a bit before shaking her head and sucking in a deep breath before exhaling to try and induce some meditative calm to still her boiling temper. In, out, in, out...finally, she could think more clearly.
"Samus, we are going to have to have a talk about outbursts like that." Adam said before Samus shot a glare at him that briefly made him flinch a finger before he regained his composure, well used to Lydia and Ian's death glares and knowing that while she could snap him like a toothpick, she wouldn't.
She ignored him, focusing instead on the one useful thing she felt like she could do.
Data weaved through her like the sensation of a small breeze, her mind picking apart what the computers were working on out of her refusal to wait for the analysis to be done. The raptaptap sensation, minuscule and almost unnoticeable, was there because she enjoyed a bit of tactility in learning. It built up a bit and then levelled out as she saw and exploited the gaps in the defences and stepped through just as she would in the heat of battle.
Freelancers were habitually very careful with their data. It was not a profession for those who were careless about their secrets with how many enemies one could make in the job. But it did not mean they were beyond her reach. Not even close. The data was carefully routed through proxies and dummy accounts yes, but there were always traces to follow, information to compare and contrast.
Whoever this was though, was good at covering tracks. Dead ends, leads that didn't actually go anywhere, information that just stopped. It was annoying, but she figured this meant that they had to use alternative, less traceable means of information transfer, face-to-face conversations, long-distance telepathy, quantum entanglement packets. So she looked through any data that might fit those parameters.
There was a lot, countless hours of security footage, piles upon piles of psionic or mystic signals, records of Morph disturbances, and subatomic fluctuation data. It would have driven supercomputers to insanity trying to process all of this as quickly as she did.
But she crunched it down to what she needed, sifting out all the junk data, narrowing down possibilities guided by her education, raw brainpower, and the subtle guidance of her distant sight. A galaxy of data condensed down to an ocean, and then to a puddle, and then finally to a drop of information.
She saw a Freelancer that she didn't quite recognise, but her armour quickly identified as Malegon. A horned thing that had the visage of a devil beast with armour-clad leathery wings and a helm like a skull with bladed horns emerging from the sides of a vaguely humanoid head. Armour the colour of drying human blood, bone, and onyx wrapped around a frame that must have been at least eight and a half meters tall. They had finished up a communique she wasn't privy to, at least not yet, likely with someone higher up on the hierarchy than them.
It seemed innocuous enough, but she caught a mention of "Skjoldr" in the final phases of the conversation. Not something that would have been caught by the Academy's aurora unit as it had no reason to check but...
"We need to find Malegon." Samus said, emerging from her brief trance like she was pulling her head out of the water, inhaling air in lungfuls she didn't need and turning her attention to Adam.
"He mentioned Arne's surname...he has to be involved." Samus said, feeling that certainty coiled around her guts and wriggling its way into her soul. This had to be it, if he wasn't behind it, he could at least point them to the one who was.
"Who is Malegon, why does he matter?" Sevrin blurted, confused by what was unfolding around him.
"Devil-Warden, super loyal to his contracts but only as long as the contract lasts. Gets amazing results from his magitech expertise and assets, but wouldn't help a dying child on the street if he wasn't paid to." Kreatz said, noting that he was getting some odd looks from the inheritors and that Yramil was on the verge of asking "how do you know that?" before he pre-empted the question, scratching at the back of his neck. "I uh..used to collect his action figures." He said a little nervously.
"Well, now that I know where I need to go…" Samus said, letting her helmet manifest over her head and starting to walk towards the door. Sevrin, eager to shine a light on a dark path, tried to get ahead of her in doing so before Adam shook his head.
"Samus, Sevrin, you two are thirteen, you know I can't allow that. I thank you for doing your part, but this is as far as you go." Adam said.
"Get out of my way Adam." Samus said back.
"I won't do that either." He replied.
"Then why are you here?!"
"Because someone has to speak for you when the investigation arrives." He said gravely.
Consolidated Logbook Entries
Individuals: Mercenaries: Active: No Appreciable Political Affiliation: Devil's Fire Company: Male: Corvargal: Malegon
Malegon, also known as Devil-Warden, is a Corvargal Mercenary well known for their fondness for weapons of variable length such as whips, chains, meteor hammers, and flails that allow him to control the terms of melee engagements. Though their early career is generally obscure, and few details on his early life are of public record, Malegon is known for ruthless professionalism, a lack of scruples so long as his code of honour remains unviolated, and a great deal of skill and experience when it comes to the management of his detachment of the infamous Devil's Fire company. Most of which shares his ethos and whose Hell-Lancers are well known for their fondness for extremely heavy armour, fanatic discipline, and enthusiasm for destroying dissent or agents of disruption as well as very few qualms about taking work to crush political foes of various unpleasant regimes. Malegon's personality is noted to be severe and efficiency-obsessed, and while generous to success is scornful of failure.
Samus' Notes: Malegon's involvement here doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense...why come here? This isn't the sort of work Hell-Lancers normally do. But if they're hiring Devil's Fire troopers then...they definitely want whatever they're planning accomplished in a hurry.
Arne's Notes: Malegon has a file in my mother's notes. Most of it notes that the two of them had a vicious rivalry due to their opposing lines of work. She got the better of him most of the time but...am I even at my mother's level right now?
Mercenary Companies: No Appreciable Political Affiliation: Enforcement and Warfare: Devil's Fire Company
The Devil's Fire Company is part of a supraorganisation known as Hell-Lancers who live by an ethos of professionalism, extreme discipline, a need to enforce order upon the cosmos by assisting proper authority in crushing agents of rebellion and disharmony, and a belief in the righteousness of hierarchy and the rule of the better over the lesser. Like all Hell-Lancers, the Devil's Fire Company accepts only skilled volunteers who are able to pass their rigorous exams and tests, culminating in battling entities conjured from the Morph by Magi and Espers to see if recruits can really take the worst the cosmos has to offer. The Devil's Fire Company is despised by many for its enthusiasm in "skull-cracking" missions and its preference for counter-insurgency or enforcement duties as well as its openness to the usage of terror tactics to weaken enemies in preparation for shock assaults meant to shatter an enemy's lines with hard-hitting schwerpunkt concentrations of force. The Devil's Fire is also particularly known for its employment of scorched Earth tactics and its specialty in incendiary weapons and high concentration of incendiary esoterics as well as its particular focus on punishment of those it believes have spread disruption and disarray and need to be reminded of the duties of the law. Their high success rate however, ensures that they continue to find employment regardless of how distasteful their methods are to many. Especially as they are well known for their confidentiality regarding clients who do not wish to be named.
Samus' Notes: What kind of person would join a group that revels in punishment to this degree? Even for laws that aren't their own? Who could honestly believe the universe needs that much order that you have to go and help other countries enforce their laws? Is the pay really that good for a bunch of fascist jerks?
Arne's Notes: The Devil's Fire are well known among the Volunteer army for their willingness to do just about anything that countries don't want to be seen having their normal troops do if they pay is good enough and if it fits their totalitarian ideology. I think at least, they might have some information on Cylosis and why it was attacked.
Organisations: Mercenaries: Quasi-Religiously Motivated: Multi-Species: Politically Motivated: Fascistic: Hell-Lancers
Hell-Lancers are known for a number of things, their grueling rites of initiation and recruitment to see if a recruit has a body and soul that can "withstand the fires of Hell", derived from a syncretic blend of differing religions that believe in salvation, mercy, karma, and damnation for sufficient misdeeds. Of which they see rebellion as one of the highest forms of sin. Hell-Lancers do not allow those they believe are unworthy to serve as anything more than "Squires" who attend to the proper Lancers who hold the real privileges within the organisations contained under the Umbrella of the Hell-Lancer religious order. While their philosophy originated from humans, they are known to accept membership from a wide variety of species so long as they are considered able to properly integrate with the harsh discipline and regimental culture of the Hell-Lancer sand their subsidiary organisations that typically serve as mercenaries hiring themselves out in the cause of punishing the rebellious and the disruptive and restoring peace, discipline, and order where it is needed.
Samus' Notes: I don't understand how they can claim to be believers of a religion of Mercy when they're so obsessed with punishment and torment for those who break the law. But I think I'm seeing where they're involved. If they're being hired by someone, they probably want someone plausibly deniable, and they probably think they can put down some anarchy while they're at it. I'll need to get some more data though, I shouldn't commit to a theory until I know what's going on.
Arne's Notes: From my parents' journals, Hell-Lancers ranked somewhere between Space Pirate Marauders and Vhozon Judges in terms of how soullessly they approached the matter of discipline and enforcement. They usually find more jobs from the Judiciary on Vho than anyone else though, so what they could be doing in something involving the Imperium or the Confederacy is definitely...interesting. Concerning, but interesting.
Topics: Military: Confederacy of Dismor: Organisational: Marauder Cells
The Confederacy of Dismor, or the Space Pirates as they are traditionally known as, are comprised of countless component organisations, nationalities, entities, and groups that operate under the treaty of Dismor under the authority of High Command. As such, their military while vast and lavishly funded is made out of many disparate elements forced together under the dictates of High Command to achieve its ends. Given the near constant war-footing of the Confederacy, a method of organising its armies quickly was necessary; resulting in the Marauder Cell structure. Marauder Cells are commanded by a Warlord who is approved by higher ups in the Confederal military based on their prior service record and given leeway over their operational area to achieve the ends given to them by High Command. Whereas the Confederal military is overseen by High Command's infamous enforcers, Marauder Cells are given considerably more freedom of action and discretion to acquire the resources needed to carry out their operations. As such, they are often trusted with deep-penetration raids and black operations against other countries that the standard military is considered too unsubtle to do.
Samus' Notes: I guess this is what most people think of when you say "Space Pirate", a Warlord with a leash from High Command told to go maul everything they can in a small stretch of space on their master's command. To think that they're so committed to causing destruction that they perfected a way to slip troops into other countries just to cause terror...We need to find the Warlord in charge of the Cell as quickly as possible.
Arne's Notes: Marauder Cells are one of the primary ways most societies interact with the space pirates. Self-sufficient nomad fleets able to set up hidden stations or bases on planets under localised command structures who get a lot of freedom to do whatever it is they're ordered to. Growing more troops, building machines, then unleashing themselves on targets of opportunity. If they're close enough to the Prodigy Program headquarters to attack, that means there's a large Marauder Cell nearby.
Consolidated Headlines and Articles
Regional Level News: Military: Engenoid: Daily Esquire: Hell-Lancer deployments in Styrmandin Galaxy used for Marketing
As the Rantik Swarmhood descends upon the Styrmandin galaxy, the beleaguered defenders call upon anything that can offer to help them against the overwhelming invasion force. This has, unfortunately, included massive contracts extended to the Hell-Lancers, particularly the Devil Fire, Godbrand, Warspite, Tyrant Hammer, and Morningstar companies. Thus inviting the religiously inclined mercenaries to the galaxy in large numbers to fill out the ranks of the defending forces in the hopes of preventing galactic sterilisation or destruction at the hands of the Swarm. While many welcome the arrival of the Hell-Lancers given their elite record and stellar history in combat, others point to the Hell Lancer's well-documented insistence on forcing the societies they assist along more authoritarian and hierarchal lines. However, protests at this stage are largely regarded as unable to enact meaningful changes as martial law is put in place to prepare for invasion.
Samus' Notes: The more I look into these Hell-Lancers, the more I'm convinced that I need to look into who's paying them.
Arne's Notes: If I had to guess, they're likely trying to set up a permanent resource base.
Universal Level News: Progenitor: International: Stellar Inquirer: Multinational Research Team Announces Discovery of Progenitor Map
The discovery of the "Codex Stellaris" announced by the Intrepidity team has the scientific community in unprecedented excitement as the locations of the sites of countless Progenitor reliquaries has been unveiled. Many are on already inhabited worlds, and others are on uncharted or even undiscovered planets within a hundred megaparsec radius. Expeditions are already being planned by multiple countries, though analysts cite concerns that the wave of discoveries may result in increased friction in a time of deteriorating international relationships. The team has urged that this discovery be used to encourage internationalism and cooperation instead of sparking further flash points. Proposals for an international progenitor regulator body have once again been floated by the scientific community, though expectations for the success of this proposal are low.
Samus' Notes: People are really this excited about a map? It wasn't really secret or anything. But if the Space Pirates want it, I won't let them have it.
Arne's Notes: It's too bad that not even a source as optimistic as the Inquirer believes the call for cooperation will go anywhere.