Metroid: Initializing - Chapter 1: Invasion

Roughly one hundred thousand kilometers from planet Daiban, in the heart of Federation space, a distortion of spacetime flared up and vanished like a bubble in some viscous matrix, collapsing to reveal a sleek, deep golden single-passenger craft. The energy transference required to drill so deeply through the fourth dimension left the mass of the craft with a hungrily positive charge, sucking in any electrons that could be spared from local sources. The resulting jolt, luckily, was not enough to disable the life support or navigation systems onboard, but it was sufficient to awaken the ship's operator in a most uncomfortable manner.

Shocked to wide-eyed lucidity, she opened all channels with her free arm, reaching across the cramped cabin from her wall-mounted zip-hammock to the front console. No hails yet, so she squirmed out of her canvass cocoon and drifted in zero gravity to the sanitation fixtures further aft. The urinal tube was uncomfortable, having been designed only to accommodate Chozo anatomy, but years of practice had allowed her to perfect the art of relieving herself without any complications. With a few dry-wipes she cleaned her eyes and cheeks and gurgled some mouthwash unceremoniously, just as the console released an electronic noise.

"Just a moment, please," she shouted.

"Daiban alpha one seven, this is GFS four niner requesting identification, copy?"

She felt no urgent need to respond. Soon they would receive the full debriefing in all its horrific detail. But the first step before talking to anyone via hologram was to look at least marginally prepared. Splaying her limbs, the young pilot activated her zero suit, having it teleported directly onto her person in the place of the cotton underwear she slept in, and after a few ties and clips to bind her long blond hair, she was ready for her day.

"I'm a GFS contractor," she said, "requesting clearance for a Hunter-class gunship just under 140 tons. One on board: Samus Aran."

"Copy that," replied a faceless operator. "I'll put you through to claims."

A moment later, the holographic representation of one of the higher-ups materialized, a being whose leathery skin and bushy moustache reminded Samus of an enormous freshwater fish in senatorial robes.

"It's good to see you in one piece, Ms. Aran. They have asked me to thank you directly."

"Oh, give me a break." She had no time for formalities. It was simply time to collect.

"Very well, but be mindful that this last contract was a request from an old friend. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. You're not the only qualified bounty hunter in the sector, you know."

As he palavered on about the line of names above hers on the list - Ghor, Gandrayda, Sylux, Noxus - Samus glazed over and lapsed into flashbacks of the freezing intensity of the kilomoles of thermoinverted plasma she had to pump down Ridley's pterodactyline throat before confronting Mother Brain back on Zebes. When it felt like her turn to speak, Samus turned her attention back to the conversation.

"Their convoluted experiment is over. I live as a bounty hunter now."

"Well," said the senator, "I'm thankful that your level of personal interest in the case was not a hindrance. There are many of us who thought Old Bird's bioethics rather...questionable."

"Let's not talk about him. Just load the money to my account and transfer me back to air traffic control."

"As you wish, Samus."

Control advised her to suit up and initiate her ship's autopilot so that they could safely guide her craft to her personal landing pad outside of the Federation capital's main grid, a cluster of wooded basaltic mesas overlooking the jagged cityscape. Nearby, her temporary domicile stood quietly, undisturbed for months in preparation for her return.

Once landed, the shining green windscreen dimmed as the top aperture dilated, and from inside rose a metallic goddess of indomitable strength, her bulbous metal spaulders gleaming a coppery gold in the low light of the hangar. Feeling no need to hurry, she unsuited manually, starting with the helmet as she ambled into the house, leaving a trail of weapons and armor that automatically teleported back to the cargo bay of the ship. Once she finished the tiring work of stripping down to her electric blue zero suit, she unfastened her moccasins, kicked them into a corner, and peeled off the hot, skin-tight zero. She hadn't been naked in a free atmosphere in weeks, and she knew the subtle difference between wiping off inside a titanium alloy can and feeling the dry, cool breeze caress every one of her tight, over-stressed muscles. Walking naked in Daibanian gravity felt strange; for so long her equilibrium had been attuned to the physical feedback of the servos in her body armor - what her Chozo benefactors named the Varia suit. It was calibrated to feel like Zebesian gravity as she flailed a grapple beam from one hand and a plasma cannon over the other. Now she tip-toed about, struggling to stay balanced and not allow her unrelentingly athletic legs to pound the floor or shove her into the air.

"A shower," she thought. "That's what I need." The bathroom was down the hall, past the plastic, hard-paneled kitchen, through a faintly glowing neon-blue aperture. Carefully, she strode down the hall and touched the hexagonal door, which twisted open invitingly.

"Bath, 322 K, medium lights. Set music to 'lonely playlist.'"

"Yes, Samus," replied the home's central computer.

She immersed her body, feeling every muscle, every thermal gradient oscillate under her skin. It amazed her how much she had taken warm water and fresh air for granted.

"Open window...Turn off climate control," she moaned.

Again, the unemotional central computer replied, "Yes, Samus."

Blindly reaching for the nearest wash rag, she flopped it into the water, folded it in half, and placed it over her eyes. She sank to where the water touched her chin and remained in that position for over an hour.

Then she didn't even dry off, but gracefully rose from the water, her warm muscles tingling as the cool breeze kissed her wet pink skin. Drifting across the hall through her bedroom aperture felt almost like a dream; anything done in the absence of a throbbing adrenal rush felt like a dream at that point.

"Hm, I suppose we could put calm on that list below air and water, of things I had almost forgotten," she mused to herself as she pulled on a pair of panties and a tank top.

Down she went, feeling the light Daibanian gravity carry her to the wide, low bed near the glass expanse of her bedroom window. Her foot, recalling an old habit, nudged open the door of the minifridge. The smell was too much.

Instantly up, her hands flew to the disgusting icebox, where she observed a fridge nastier than the piled carcasses of bloated metroid, but there was one canned beverage not far past its expiration date. Another simple pleasure.

Samus collapsed back into her bed and lay sipping the sweet, cool drink. Some kind of Chozo soda with the mild burn of alcohol. Alone on a bed wide enough for two or three, she let out a deep sigh as early memories unexpectedly flooded her mind.

---

As the humans had long ago abandoned Earth's archaic calendrics and conformed to the Galactic Federation's count of Daiban's orbital periods, Samus was three years old when the year was called 2058, and the Milky Way galaxy was moving into an age of prosperity - contributing to the monolithic scale of a centrally-controlled galactic government as well as the largest criminal organization ever to exist in recorded history. With the Federation's spread of democracy came its antithesis: the legendary violence and savagery of the group colloquially known as the Space Pirates, who in 2058 had their sights set on Zebes's sister planet, the dense mineral rich planet of K-2L.

K-2L had in the preceding decades become a leading supplier of afloraltite, a rather poetic name for the cheapest and most abundant naturally-occurring nuclear fuel. Vast crews of human workers were recruited to mine, process, and distribute this substance. Humans, it turns out, developed the reputation as among the hardest-working, most risk-tolerant species in possession of spoken languages and even some mathematical competence. Numerous qualities endeared them to the dominant species of the Federation. Near Zebes, a planet which for centuries had housed a thriving community of sentient avian humanoids called the Chozo, Terran miners toiled away, overseen by their most respected director of operations, Rod Aran. He and his wife Virginia both lived and worked at the K-2L mining facility while their daughter Samus attended the on-site preschool.

In their newlywed days back on Earth when Rod and Virginia discussed the former's latest employment venture, neither of them knew what it would be like to travel the tens of thousands of light-years to Earth's latest frontier. Human science at the time was growing as it never had before, as the sages of other worlds gave them new equations, new calculus, new laws of physics that all made the universe much less vast and unknowable. Now it was possible to construct a network of wormholes and travel at speeds once thought impossible. Still, in galactic year 2052, a trip from Earth to K-2L would take five Daibanian years - plenty of time for a young space-faring couple to live aboard a carrier, make a baby, and raise her to her first two years en route to a new home.

By 2058 the three were for the most part settled into a daily routine, living as a nuclear family. Rod would pour himself into his work, performing tasks each layer of the mining hierarchy called their own, sometimes not returning to his living quarters for seventeen hours, leaving Samus to attend school and Virginia to cook, clean, shop at K-2L's only grocery store, and help her daughter in her studies. It was thankless work for both parents, but in their small, precious moments of free time, they were driven that much closer to each other. And even at three, Samus was developing many precocious tendencies, such as to mentally catalogue all new life she encountered in the forests around the mining colony.

On K-2L, both humans and Chozo could breathe unassisted, yet another reason why the planet was such an economic and strategic boon. This meant that between school days, Samus and the colony's two other children could run and play in almost perfect safety. In fact, it was unanimously agreed that the two safest places on the planet were the preschool and the woods just outside, where the largest animals one might find would be a flying raccoon or a rabbilis, the native prolagomorph with long ears, a bushy tail, and innate kleptomanic survival strategies.

One sunny day, as Samus and her two friends played in the woods, a rabbilis hopped right up and stole the young girl's book bag. He took it and ran far into the forest. Samus ran after him as her friends shouted something about a space ship. Unable to stop and listen, she chased the rabbilis further into the woods, where suddenly he dashed up a tree, taking her book bag with him. When her friends caught up, the rabbilis had not moved. Apparently he had taken the bag to his home.

"Hey Samus!"

Glancing back, she said nothing.

"What are you doing out here?" demanded William, to which Samus remained silent.

"Everyone's going to the airfield," added Ricky.

William, the shorter of the two boys, said, "A new ship came."

"It looks kinda weird," said Ricky. "They call it a Chozo ship."

Finally, Samus was interested. "Where?" she asked wide-eyed, momentarily forgetting the rabbilis.

---

Back at the dig site, the humans perplexedly stared at a pair of mysterious cloaked figures. A chasm of silence passed between the workers and these two strangers.

"...but," uttered a foreman, "you just want us to give it to you?"

"That is correct," said one of the strangers fully ten seconds later. "We need to obtain a large amount. We found no other place to procure it on such short notice."

Again, silence. The only sound to be heard was a gentle breeze. Then the voice of a man pushing through the crowd of miners, followed by others whispering, "Oh, pardon me, chief Aran, sir."

Rod stood before the two visitors, whose naked talons hanging from their flowing sleeves revealed them to be aliens; he stood and stared, ready to listen.

"You must be the director of operations," said the more articulate of the two strangers.

"That I am, and you are..."

"In dire need of two megamoles of afloraltite."

"I'm truly sorry, but legally I can't just give you half of our yield, even if I wanted to. The Galactic Caravan owns this outfit. Why," he continued, finally identifying the creatures, "are the Chozo so eager for it so suddenly?"

Before the Chozo could respond, someone shoved him from behind, knocking off his hood to reveal a broad, yet sharp beak set at the base of an aged face of gray feathers and two dark, deep-set eyes. He had the look of both a mythic wizard and a grizzled falcon. The gathered humans were shocked, and a little embarrassed, that one of their own had so disrespected an alien visitor, but the Chozo didn't seem impressed one way or the other that a little girl accidentally ran into him at full speed. Judging by her expression, poor Samus seemed more surprised than anyone.

Eyes still fixed on the hawk man, Rod scolded his daughter. "Samus! Go to your room and don't come out until I say."

"Yes, daddy," she whispered.

Though she remained motionless, unable to blink as the massive adult-sized creature slowly descended to one knee.

"Oh, my," he gasped, "what an energetic little one. Are you hurt?"

"Um, no," she said, having forgotten her father's orders.

"Is this your first time meeting one of us?" the old bird asked.

Samus was still unprepared to respond.

"There's nothing to fear," he grumbled in that deep, somehow parrotlike voice. "We have much more in common than not. We even have most of the same genetic sequence. Don't think of us as aliens. You can see our planet on most nights without a telescope."

Samus had no idea what he was talking about, as most Chozo can't tell a three-year-old human from a nine-year-old one, especially one as tall and intelligent as Samus. Unconcerned with DNA and telescopes, she resorted to what she was best at - introducing herself.

"I'm Samus. I'm three years old." The humans chuckled upon hearing this. Rod kept silent, wondering where this was going.

"They call me Old Bird. Are you the boss here?"

"No, you want my daddy. He's right there."

This caused everyone to erupt in a short fit of laughter, during which Samus took hold of Old Bird's talon and pulled him in the direction from which she had come, begging him to help her with something amid the protests of her father. Reluctantly, Old Bird followed the little girl, leaving his partner and Mr. Aran staring dumbfounded.

"Gray Voice," shouted Old Bird in their language, "close the deal, quickly." Both understood that helping the child might be perceived as a gesture of good will. The humans certainly had the upper hand in this case, so the Chozo needed to be as persuasive as possible.

Samus led Old Bird to the same tree in which the rabbilis stashed the book bag. The creature sat upon the lowest branch, grooming himself and watching over his prize. Down below, Old Bird sat down in order to keep eye contact with the child.

"That bunny taked my stuff. Can you get it back?"

"I'm sorry," said Old Bird, "but my climbing days are long gone."

Samus stared for a moment, confused. "Can you fly up there and get my bag? I'll give you some candy."

"No," Old Bird rumbled, "my species doesn't fly anymore. We lost our wings long ago. How about you? Primates are renowned climbers."

"Um, I tried. Then I falled and then I came to you, and the bunny still has my stuff. I don't climb good." The thought of losing her school supplies saddened and infuriated Samus.

"Aargh!" she screamed, "you're a bad bunny!"

"Perhaps," said Old Bird, "he refuses to come down because he thinks you're angry with him."

She threw a rock, which would have been a direct hit if the rabbilis hadn't dodged.

"Why not make friends with him? You'll find diplomacy almost always more effective than aggression." His wisdom still couldn't hook an audience.

"What should we do?" asked Samus.

"I suggest you give him a name."

It took a moment for her to settle on one she truly liked. Her rushing thoughts showed on her face. Then, her eyes lit up.

"Pyonchi!" she cried.

The rabbilis looked down and tilted his head.

"Come down, Pyonchi," the girl shouted.

More than anything, Pyonchi felt confusion; perhaps this furious human was too tired to kill a rabbilis.

Old Bird stood up, clearly amused by the bare-skinned talking ape child - her innocence, her ignorance, her ability to cease her aggressive behavior at the turn of a thought. That was rare in the galaxy.

---

Back at the airfield, Gray Voice and Rod Aran stood face to face, finding the most appropriate words to convey their needs. The workers had ceased their labors, knowing that something more important than apparent was afoot.

"We have a great respect for the Chozo," continued Aran, "but that has no bearing on this matter. Look, I can't legally justify giving up that much afloraltite. However, if you can give us a more compelling moral reason, I might be able to work out an under-the-table arrangement."

"I wish, Mr. Aran, that I could explain in greater detail, but we too are bound to certain...regulations. We have a great energy deficit the reason for which must remain a secret for now. We are trying to quietly resolve a potential crisis."

"Sir, we humans are no mere beasts of burden. We know..."

"Mr. Aran, I did not mean to insinuate..."

"We know what a dangerous weapon can do without proper oversight. They get stolen. They leak. They become self-aware! Now, no matter how you've managed to screw up your planet, I need to know if you deserve such an exorbitant amount of something that doesn't belong to any of us."

Old Bird returned to the conversation with Samus in tow.

"We're leaving," he whispered to Gray Voice. "Mr. Aran, I most humbly apologize for troubling you. I must ask that you forgive our rudeness."

"You're going already?" Samus whined. "But we just started being friends."

"Yes," replied Old Bird, "yes I'm afraid. I have a very important job to do."

With a bob of the head, the two rebarked and lifted off. Only Samus said a sincere goodbye. The rest were more than happy to get back to work. At the time, no human had ever seen an aggressive alien, and they would give anything to postpone their first space war indefinitely.

---

Their thrusters disengaged, the two Chozo drifted toward the gravitational field of K-2L's neighboring planet, the harsh, rocky outpost of Zebes. Aboard, Old Bird's thoughts wandered upon the humans (who with them had brought children!), the afloraltite, the number of gigajoules needed to maintain stasis on so many crop-units of metroid; it was all a constant balancing act. A gray voice snapped Old Bird from his reverie.

"Well that was a waste of valuable time, and now we don't have nearly enough energy without the afloraltite."

"Yes," agreed Old Bird, "and I fear we must rush our plans as well. Have you seen the latest biostatic readings?"

"I can only imagine what will happen when..."

"No," interrupted Old Bird, "we must not allow metroid to remain unawakened. If they can be controlled..."

"Yes, if!" cried Gray Voice.

"It can be used to secure peace, for a much greater evil remains: parasite X."

The two sat in silence, remembering the horrific properties X had been known to display - replicating and killing its host, forging genetic compatibility with almost any life form, behaving like no less than a sentient disease vector.

"The time X has been alone out there is increasing," said Old Bird.

"It can't be helped," said Gray Voice. "We have to contain it before the Galactic Federation knows about it, for I fear its incubation period is just about up."

"Such cruelty of fate that metroid are the only creatures immune," added Old Bird. "The sooner we deploy metroid, the better."

---

On a planet many lightyears away, it was a clear night. Stars were visible above the observatory as not a single acid cloud dared obstruct Ridley's view of the deep purple sky. In the faint light of the holoprojector, the draconic pirate officer's blue-black exoskeleton flickered as new data poured in from the spectroscopic instrumentation scanning the heavens for signs of opportunity as well as mischief, chaos, and plunder. Ridley cared for those only insofar as they could enable his primary addiction: killing.

As intelligent as he was, he was still an apex predator whose rare combination of bloodthirsty savagery and ruthless cunning made him the most valued officer of the large but loosely organized group of terror states known to outsiders as the Space Pirates. This night, he busied himself with astronomy, searching for an answer to why the feeble Chozo race decided to settle such a rugged, tactically useless place as Zebes. A small calibration of his instruments provided a possible answer.

"Lord Ridley," said one of the more knowledgeable observers as he teleported into the chamber. Ridley's wings twitched as he fixed his icy gaze on the steaming humanoid crustaecean before him.

"What is it, you fool? Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Pardon my intrusion, sir," said the lowly Zebesian defector, showing no fear. "But we have more data on the star system you've been observing. This energy fluctuation, as it turns out, is not a stellar anomaly."

"Get to the point!" hissed the massive dragon.

"Sir, that is a planet, and it's saturated with afloraltite. Also, we've hacked a few Chozo files. They mention a Federation mining facility."

Ridley thought for a moment, his orange eyes glowing. "Sounds to me like an easy mark."

To the few pirates milling about below, he screamed in his metallic voice, "Ready the ships, boys! In two hours we set a course for FS-176. Turns out that star has yet another golden planet!"

The pirates cheered and waved their crablike limbs in applause.

---

The next day was business as usual for the miners of K-2L, though present on everyone's mind was the strange visit by the now very needy Chozo. Rod Aran, of course, had before turned down many requests for free fuel. Federation mines even had to set a limit on the donating of afloraltite, as it was the preferred fuel of nearly all technological heritages, but the Chozo had never asked for anything before, and the humans began to wonder what was going on.

But no one could have foreseen the planet-wide blackout that would take place that day. Rod noticed a problem when the freighter Beatrix III was unable to establish communication with space traffic control and initiate its launch sequence. So he burst onto the flight deck, demanding answers.

"We don't know, sir. There's something in the atmosphere blocking communications."

"In such a clear sky?" He couldn't believe such a thing.

"See for yourself," said the captain, indicating the heads-up display. "We have an empty signal here, and a thermal spike here. Could be a derelict vessel dropping out."

"Check the electron laser grid," Rod commanded.

"It's malfunctioning."

"Wait, what was that? Go back to the map."

"I saw that too...an optical ping."

Rod knew exactly what that meant. The facility had been spotted. He put his walkie talkie to his mouth and sent out a code black.

The captain glanced back at him. "Code b-black, sir?"

"Yes, make it a priority to get communications back up," he said, smacking a large red button near the cockpit door. "I'll alert everyone using local channels."

"Yes, sir."

Aran hit the ground and shouted both aloud and via the walkie that they needed to secure the base immediately. The Space Pirates were on their way.

Communication channels opened back up, and his message was broadcast all over the facility.

"Get all ancillary personnel underground! Security, await my mark. Tina, if you can hear me, make sure Virginia and Samus go immediately to the bunker. Control, send out a priority one distress call to GFS and Zebes. This is not a drill, people!"

He shouted various orders on his way to the mining team locker room, where he stashed his flare gun and two grenades. The walkie beeped.

"Rod, it's Tina. We've got Virginia, but Samus is nowhere to be found."

"Well find her!" he shouted. Then he paused and took a deep breath. In an inappropriately calm voice, he murmured, "Please...find her. Over and out."

---

Three klicks south in a small clearing in the woods, little Samus was playing with her new friend Pyonchi, unaware that the mine was under attack. She and the rabbilis were having the time of their lives rolling around and playing fetch when Pyonchi froze and noticed a flash of light off in the distance. Samus paused and tried to figure out what Pyonchi was staring at. Just then she noticed an expanding mushroom-shaped cloud rapidly envelop the buildings of the mining facility; the shock wave knocked her and Pyonchi over a log and into a shallow ditch, seconds before a raging wind of fire blasted everything above them. The sound was so intense that Samus couldn't even hear herself scream. She could only feel the grating of her vocal chords as everything around them grew unimaginably hot.

The smoke cleared just enough to reveal a fleet of jagged black ships, dropping almost batlike upon the charred structures. The faint pops and chirps of plasma rifles sounded off in the distance.

Aboard the largest ship, Ridley hissed orders to everyone in the fleet.

"They're entirely helpless now, so kill anything that walks, squirms, or begs for mercy!"

"Roger that, Rid," said a new recruit down below.

"Never call me that! Or I'll kill you too! And remember not to touch the afloraltite. If you want to live until pay day, just aim for the humans."

Savoring the foreplay, Ridley sat back and waited for the explosions to stop, but he could wait no longer. Opening the rear cargo hatch, he sprinted down the ramp and dove straight into the center of the carnage. Most pirates, who stand equally to humans but only about half of Ridley's height, use either guns or energy sabers during an assault, but not Ridley. He always moved in swinging his naked claws and spewing his fiery breath, hoping to manually feel every kill before cashing in on the spoils.

He landed hard, sweeping back Terrans and Zebesians alike with his powerful wings. In the brief silence, he heard the sniveling voice of some pathetic human child. He turned around to drink her in - short blond hair, bright blue eyes, clutching a tiny pet mammal. What a delicious thing to murder, he thought. Her screams of fear and agony would be music to his ears. He giggled like it was his first time.

The battle raged around the two as they stared at each other. One of the pirates shouted something about the place being captured and ready for unloading, but all Ridley could focus on was this soft, diminutive creature chattering in her alien language.

"Ridley?" She must have heard one of the others address him as such. "I'm Samus. This is Pyonchi." She tried to hide her obvious terror.

"Do you know who I am?" Ridley asked, somewhat impressed by the child's bravery.

"No, but I'm not scared of you. Have you come to ask my daddy for shiny rocks?"

"How old are you?" he asked.

Samus held up three fingers. "This many Earth years."

Ridley, of course, knew little of the developmental cycle of this new species, but he had read that humans were basically useless for the first fourth of their lives. This one looked like it just recently hatched.

"You are a cute one," Ridley hissed. "I'll take exquisite pleasure in killing you."

"Samus!" screamed Virginia off in the distance. "Samus! Get over here!"

"Mommy!" cried Samus.

+ Graphic scene - not suitable for younger readers - click to read

Ridley seized this fortuitous opportunity to take the screaming mother in his enormous hands, lift her above his head, and rip her in half at the waist. Sparks shot from his beak as he laughed at the trauma he was causing, clapping with elation and smashing the two halves of the dead woman together in a shower of blood and ground organs, leaving Samus to run off crying with Pyonchi in her arms.

"We're stocked, sir," said one of the pirates. "The afloraltite's ours."

"Good," growled Ridley. "Now burn everything! Let no one survive!"

Within the hour, the fighters, drop ships, and carriers were in flight, rising above the smoke and into the upper atmosphere. Aboard the flagship, a lone human stow-away hunched between two truck-sized containers wondering what to do next. The thought of what they had done to the facility and all those unarmed workers slowly intensified his silent rage until he could hold it in no longer.

Two pirates detected the sound of Rod Aran breathing through his clenched teeth.

"Looks like we're infested!" said one jokingly to the other.

"Yeah, but watch out!" warned the other. "He's got a flare gun!" The noise they made faintly resembled what other beings call laughter.

Rod smiled sardonically and held his gun sideways, the better for them to see that it was no ordinary flare gun, but a hydrogen fusion flare launcher, designed to be seen from space. This changed the pirates' demeanor at once.

"You idiot!" shouted the first pirate. "Say something to calm him down!"

"No...do...shoots!" said the second in his best Terran. "No...do...boom! We...talk!"

"Oh, I don't think so," Rod said gruffly. "Talking's over." He pointed the gun at the nearest container. "I'm sorry, Virginia. This is the only way."

The cries of protest were instantly cut off by a super-heated explosion, hot enough to ignite a chain reaction in the afloraltite and instantly vaporize the lower quarter of the flagship and any surrounding vessels.

Ridley, riding the intact command deck on its fatal drop from the upper atmosphere, gripped the first available surface and crawled to the nearest window. At the largest crack, he held fast and blasted hot plasma, pounding a fist against the theoretically indestructible pane. At ten thousand meters, he penetrated it and rode the resulting explosion into the falling cascade of debris, losing consciousness on his way down. The entire fleet, directly or otherwise, was disabled by the explosion, subsequently crashing further off. Ridley landed hard in the ocean, far away from the remains of the mining facility.

---

Gray voice and Old Bird arrived hours before the Federation Police could, but were still too late. All they found were hundreds of square kilometers of smoking rubble. It was a thorough and complete massacre, replete with black skeletons, scattered entrails, and the graffiti marks of Space Pirates.

As the two stood in pensive silence, Old Bird noticed the faint noises of some small animal. He and Gray Voice turned around to find a very young human female and her pet rabbilis standing in a clear spot in the destruction, staring helplessly at two red smears in the dirt.

"Samus?" said Old Bird.

She said nothing, but merely stared at him with red eyes completely drained of their tears.

"Come. Are you hurt?" he asked.

Pyonchi cowered next to her as she continued staring in distraught silence.