Chapter 4 – Failure and Memories

     Murder is so much easier when you’re planning it.

     So thought James McMaster as he walked down the metal corridor in the Biologic Space Labs HQ.

     The stark metal walls reflected the glow of the red floor lamps, casting McMaster’s shadow both ahead and behind him, creating an effect that would have chilled a lesser man. Though his hair bore hints of gray, McMaster was still as strong and lithe as any younger man. The echo of his footsteps resounded through the hallway; but there were none to hear it.

     McMaster came to a halt at a solid wooden door, the only one in the entire building. Wood was a valuable commodity, something that had become a mark of influence and wealth. Connections of the largest extend were required to even consider the purchase of anything made of wood. To actually achieve that dream…

     It was an oaken door, one of the last of its kind. Oak was available only on what was now called Earth 0, the original, from which all human life had sprung, or so the legends told. Centuries had darkened the color significantly, and combined with the red outlining glow, made the door appear soaked in blood.

     Through the door lay the one man who made James McMaster cringe. It wasn’t that McMaster was a craven, far from it. It was the way in which the man conducted his business, a ruthlessness that defied human nature, if that were possible. And yet human was all the man could be. DNA sensors in every doorway and wall and light fixture were programmed to alert security to the presence of inhuman product.

     And yet, the man behind the door had never been seen.

     The first time McMaster had been summoned to the great oaken door, he had made the mistake of knocking. The scars still stood out upon his knuckles, a reminder of the strange protections surrounding not only the door, but the hallway and everything inside the room as well. Involuntarily, his hand twitched. The pain had long since vanished, but the memory still remained, and haunted his dreams.

     With a silence born of fear, the door swung open, revealing a rectangle of darkness. Not the darkness one sees in the dead of night, but something deeper, more pure in its existence, if one could say that darkness existed. McMaster stepped through, stopping at the appointed place. He had strayed from that spot once before, and bore the scars of that mistake as well as those on his hand. Behind him, the door shut.

     A light flared off to his left, and while hardly brighter than those in the hallway, the combined effects of his surroundings forced the illusion that it was brighter. He turned to the light, to proud to shade his eyes.

     Enough light spilled out to show the glossy top of a desk, but no more. The man behind the desk, McMaster’s employer, always kept his face out of the light. Perhaps he keeps the light away from his face, he thought with a start. More than a decade McMaster had served the man behind the desk and yet not once had the thought crossed his mind. If felt like he was in a book. But he didn’t let the thought show on his face.

     And then the eyes began to glow. At the first, McMaster had attributed the glow to the light. Then he remembered that white lights didn’t create a green reflection in someone’s eyes. He had long since gotten over that shock though; in his line of work, shock was a killer emotion.

     “You failed.” Two words, whispered through the darkness, and yet they resounded within McMaster’s skull. His heart pumped fire through his veins, sending screaming waves of flesh-searing heat ripping through his muscles and bones. McMaster’s voice burst from his throat, carrying with it the shame and denial that had festered in his heart at his betrayal of the trust his employer had put in him.

     It was a cleansing torture.

     As always, the pain quickly subsided, and McMaster was brought back from the precipice over madness that those disciplines often sent him. His hair, often tied back in a ponytail at the back of his neck, had come loose and was plastered all along his forehead and neck. His vision was slightly obstructed by it, but still the green eyes observed him from beyond the stationary light.

     And then they faded out. The door opened as silently as when he had arrived. Slowly McMaster heaved himself off the floor and stumbled out into the blue-tinged hallway. It was always blue, just as when he arrived it was red, and like his employers eyes were always green. The hall colors had long since blurred in his mind, to the point where he didn’t consciously see them anymore.

     Only the piercing green remained in his mind.

     Across the galaxy another was renewing an acquaintance with a floor; Samus Aran. Another wave of nausea had swept through her mere moments after discovering that the Space Pirate captain of the Freedom Two had fled from the same planet she was headed to. It had hit her gut, making her hunch over and fall out of the pilot’s chair, and though she tried to catch herself on her hand, the still-attached arm cannon had slipped on the stainless steel flooring. Having her helmet on was the only thing that saved her from a concussion, as her head had landed unceremoniously on the end of her cannon.

     The knot in her stomach slowly unraveled, allowing Samus to push herself back into her chair. The holographic image from the Freedom Two still revolved slowly in front of her, showing Proliac in a bright green outline.

     A small drop of saliva hung from the corner of her mouth. She shook her head to rid the haze from the corners from her eyes, and the spit flew onto her visor. Ever so slowly it dripped down, blocking her view of the floor.

     Manufactured air rushed in and brushed her face as Samus removed her helmet. She gulped in the oxygen and felt her head clear. Twice now she had fallen victim to whatever disease she had, and it was uncomfortable reminiscent of the attack of the X parasite. Her left arm throbbed where the spikes grown from the Metroid vaccine protruded from her arms.

     Clarity returned to Samus, and so did the severity of the situation. Her mission was to check out a disturbance; the disturbance in question was a colony of Space Pirates. Only the gods knew what the Pirates were doing on Proliac – but Samus Aran had long since given up on the gods.

     She swept a strand of hair out of her eyes and set the auto-pilot to head the ship for Proliac, then slowly made her way to her quarters.

     A few buttons pushed and a zipper pulled was all it took to remove the Fusion  Suit. She still had a bit of trouble with her mutated arm, but Samus hardly noticed it. She was caught up in memories…

A little girl sat on the steps leading up to the rubble of her home. She clutched a doll in her hands, and rocked it back and forth, singing some lullaby under her breath. Behind her a wall fell down, sending a small plume of dust over the ground.

     Down the road, another child walked aimlessly through the rubble. Was it a boy or a girl? Samus couldn’t tell. The dust and grime covered everyone, even her, marking them as the only survivors.

     At the edge of Samus’ hearing, a rumbling started. Was it the Pirates, come again to finish off the children? Was it the scavengers, come to loot what remained of their little village? Or was it something worse?

     A wind rose up from the ground and brushed by the newly made orphans. But this was no natural wind. The rumbling sound grew louder, drowning out the cries of those children not struck dumb by the devastation. The wind was coming from all directions, east and west, north and south.

     Slowly it began to collect in the center of what used to be a peaceful village. The bricks and stones that had once been a statue of the a large bird-like creature rolled out of the way, the dust covering them whipped away into the sky.

     And then the ground began to glow.

     From the earth rose those who the statue had emulated, the philosophers whose intelligence had formed technology far surpassing the most advanced human technologies. Her saviors had come to rescue her.

     Samus lay on her bed, eyes out of focus, remembering her first glimpse of those who would soon be her only family. Those who left her like her parents.

     The Chozo.

Up until now I've not wanted to post anything in my blog unless it was a chapter from one of my Fan Fictions -- then I realized that people who blog daily have much higher levels then I do. So I'm changing my perspective.

I'll probably just make these new blogs updates on my stories, so you can get an idea on how long till the next chapter.

Hopefully, Chapter 4 of Metroid: Abrasion will be posted right after this -- so if you haven't read it already, get at it!

Chapter 3 – Related Information

     The interior of the Freedom Two was more than what the exterior had advertised. Chozo magic had done more than anyone could have imagined, creating a home inside an escape.

     Samus could have easily fit her entire ship inside the Freedom Two, and still have plenty of room to move around. The walls were covered in carvings and paintings depicting the various daily chores of Chozo life, many of which she recognized from her time training with the Chozo Warriors. Granted, much of her time was spent training or sleeping, but the odd day did come around when her Master would let her and the others training with her out into the Chozo settlement to interact with the less battle oriented members of society.

     But as magnificent as the interior of the pod was, Samus had very little trouble finding the control panel. Chozo magic was again in place creating a holographic image of the surrounding space. The view was zoomed in on the pod and Samus’ ship attached to it, although the image of her ship wasn’t clear. That was her own ship’s computer masking itself. She had a very unique appearance to her ships, and the Space Pirates were all very familiar with it. If the Pirate radars picked up her ship, they wouldn’t hesitate to attack and blow her to little pieces.

     The controls were all in Chozo script, and it took Samus a few moments to drudge up the translations from her memory. Along with battle tactics, the Chozo had drilled their language into her head as well. The had civilizations on planets throughout the universe, and not all of them were known by the Galactic Federation, or on planets under G.F. control.

     The symbols on the panel jumped out at her, and her hands flew over the controls. She had long since accepted the spikes radiating out from her arms, but every now and then she still jumped at seeing them. Samus didn’t know if she’d ever get used to them.

     Around her the virtual representation of space expanded, showing the two space ships as a small dot in the center. As it began to slowly revolve, a thin green line stretched out from the center. It was revolving as well, but Samus knew that it was tracing the path that the Freedom Two had taken to arrive in this particular slice of space.

     As she continued to watch, her thoughts turned to the Space Pirate lodged in a storage locker in her own ship. How did a pirate come to possess a Chozo designed space pod, and, more importantly, how did he manage to pilot it?

     Or did he pilot it at all?

     She was suddenly aware of the silence of the interior. It wasn’t a complete silence, as there was the maintained air lock between the two ships, and the control panel let out a soft hum as it mapped out the course, but that was normal. The other silence felt…wrong to her.

     Leaving the control panel to do it’s work – the line was still slowly creeping forward, and there was no discernible direction or ending to it – Samus went to investigate the rest of the pod.

     A pod this size would be perfect for housing a battalion of Space Pirates, and if it was sent to find Samus and destroy her, she wanted to make sure she was ready for that eventuality. But whatever happened, she didn’t want to be stuck in another fight dressed as she was. She turned back to the air lock, but stole a quick look backwards at the hologram. The line still had a fair amount of space to go through. She smiled wryly at her own unintentional joke, and stepped through the lock back to her ship.

      She had stored the aptly named Fusion Suit in her own quarters instead of in the canister for her Power Suit simply because it wouldn’t fit in with the metal. She would eventually have to make another layer of insulation for the Power Suit, seeing as the old layer had become the Fusion Suit. The orange and yellow leather was hanging right where she left it, thankfully. It was the matter of moments to take off her looser clothes and put on the form-fitting suit that would protect her.

     The right arm only went down to her elbow, leaving room to attach her Arm Cannon. Samus had to go back to the engineering bay to retrieve that; she didn’t want it out in the open, so Samus had stored it in it’s own container underneath the floor. Her cannon was another piece of technology the Space Pirates were intent on copying, along with the Morph Ball function of her Power Suit.

     The cannon slid easily into place on her arm, and immediately her visor showed the addition. Samus scanned through the information that flashed onto the screen, and when she was satisfied with the results of the diagnostic, headed back to the Freedom Two.

     It was just as quiet as before, and the hologram was still slowly spinning. The green line had progressed almost to the edge of the sphere, but Samus gauged that she had enough time to search the pod before the final information had loaded. Raising her Arm Cannon, she proceeded to scan the interior.

     There were signs of pirate habitation, but she expected those; the pirate she had fought earlier proved that. But as far as her Scan Visor could indicate, there was no evidence of multiple inhabitants. That made investigation easier for Samus, but didn’t ease her troubled mind.

     She couldn’t help but continue to wonder how a Space Pirate had come to possess and pilot a Chozo built space pod. The character of the Chozo language were indecipherable to anyone who wasn’t taught the secret to translating them, which meant that either the pirate had pushed random buttons and just happened to end up in the same corner of space as it’s worst enemy, or there was another on the ship who knew the sacred philosopher’s language.

     Despite her assurances to herself, Samus was unable to find any other life forms aboard the Freedom Two. And her chances to look around more were cut short, as an alert rang out through the pod. Samus hurried to the control panel in a few strides, and down loaded the ship’s log and the holographic image of space into her visor.

     There were no entries to the ship’s log, or if there ever had been they had been erased, as no data was forthcoming. However, the 2D image of the pod’s travel history was more than enough to interest the bounty hunter. The Freedom Two had traveled more or less on a straight line; the only question was, where had it launched from?

     That information was easy to find, but before she had a chance to look at it, a second alert sounded, this one inside her helmet. Samus had installed a ship to suit system that allowed her to not only control her ship from wherever she happened to be, but also to alert her if the pirates somehow managed to infiltrate her ship.

     And she had left one alive in the cargo hold.

     Samus had no doubt as to the cause of the disturbance, and made a hasty retreat to her own ship. Sure enough, the Space Pirate she had locked away was awake, and trying his hardest to escape his confines. There were several rips in the door to the storage locker, but as of yet he had been unable to make one wide enough to fit through, or bust the hinges to the lock. He clearly wanted out, and Samus was all to happy to oblige her enemy.

     Two quick shots from her Arm Cannon took out the lock, and the pirate immediately fell out of the locker and onto his front. He rolled away, swiping with his arm scythe as he did. Samus jumped out of the way, and fired a blast from her Wave Beam, sending the pirate into an electric shock that lasted more than a few seconds. He wouldn’t get up after that, but Samus decided not to take any risks. A few minutes later, the pirate was ejected out through the trash chute; which just happened to exit out right between the rockets mounted at the back of the ship.

     With one problem settled, Samus headed to the cockpit of her ship. She inserted her Arm Cannon into the appropriate slot and transferred the information she had copied from the Freedom Two into her own ship. Perhaps it would be able to find clues in the deleted ship’s log where her visor was unable. But more importantly, she had to find out where that pod had come from.

     The hologram sprang into life in front of her, showing the most unlikely and ironic information she could have thought of. In fact, she berated herself, I should have known this would happen. The Freedom Two had started it’s journey from the planet Proliac.

Chapter 2 – The Last

     Samus froze in the entryway, every muscle taut, just waiting to spring into action. Her hand started to move to the pistol she kept on her hip, only to find an empty holster.

     Shoot.

     The pirate took no notice of her sudden cessation of movement. He flopped onto a bench lining the outer wall of the dock, holding one arm across his chest. Samus couldn’t see what exactly was wrong, but surmised that it was a retreat wound, something she was familiar with dealing if not receiving.

     She finally came to her senses and took a step towards the tool box where she kept an extra blaster. The pirates head snapped up and fixed his fiery eyes on her, stopping her once again in her tracks. Samus held her breath as she waited for her enemy to recognize her. But her fears were unfounded. The pirate broke away his gaze and started to inspect his wound.

     It was all Samus could do not to sigh out loud in relief. She could easily dispatch a whole command of pirates with her Power Suit and Arm Cannon; but they were both on the other side of the ship. She shook her head. Of course the pirate wouldn’t have recognized her. No Space Pirate that had seen her face had ever lived to enter the image into the pirate database.

     There was a chance Samus could take out the pirate, but she was hesitant to try. That incident earlier in the engineering bay was too fresh for her to want to risk having another one right in the middle of the fight. The only option was conversation.

     Unfortunately, she didn’t speak any of the pirate language. Interesting, seeing as she’d been fighting them for her entire adult life, and some of her teenage years. The pirate was talking to himself it seemed, the guttural sounds emanating from behind her making her wince. She rolled up the sleeves up her shirt and put the pistol into it’s holster on her waist. A flick of the wrist hid it under the bottom of her shirt. Gathering the medicinal materials in her arms, Samus turned back to the pirate.

     It had stopped it’s monologue and was staring at Samus. No, not at her, and her arms. Belatedly, Samus remembered that she had spikes on her arms, a side effect of the Metroid vaccine. There was a tense moment of silence as they each waited for the other to move. I guess I’ll have to fight after all, she thought to herself.

     The Space Pirate made the first move, disengaging the scythe from his arm and lunging at Samus. Obviously, the Space Pirates new of her condition and had alerted the masses as to what to look for. Samus threw the supplies in the pirates face and dived to the side, rolling up with her pistol in her hand. She fired off two shots, both directed at the pirate’s knees. Luckily for her, the pirate was facing away, and the shots connected.

     Remembering that she was in a space ship and that a hole in the hull would suck both her and her enemy out, she refrained from firing anymore. The pirate was thrashing around on the floor, creating long scratch marks in the stainless steel flooring. He had managed to slice apart several of the oxygen supply pipes running along the walls. Samus walked over and picked up one of the larger pieces. Returning to the pirate, she raised it high and brought it down forcefully on his head.

     It’s convulsing died immediately, and Samus let out a sigh of relief. She knew it wouldn’t have been as easy if the Space Pirate hadn’t been wounded, and that did little to comfort her. If she couldn’t defeat one pirate without her suit, what good was she? It was quite depressing.

     There was an empty storage locker in the cargo hold directly underneath the docking bay, so Samus spent the next half hour lugging the Space Pirate through the ship and stuffing him in. At one point he started to wake up, so she bashed him on the head with the butt of her pistol, having abandoned the pipe after using it.

     Instead of returning to her Power Suit, Samus went to investigate the Chozo pod. It must have some information in it; why else send a Space Pirate to pilot it?

     He had long since forgotten his name.

     His fight was one that seemed to span all time, every reality ever forseen, and those long since past. It was a soul consuming war that had no end. This world racked his mind, screaming at him to leave but pulling him deeper inside.

     Could he feel his body? Only when the pain lessened, and even though it rarely did, he treasured the few moments his body returned to him, when his consciousness once again had a stable center to return to after exploring the realms where pain was ruler and master.

     As if to summon such an occurrence, his body crashed into his mind, sending all of his thoughts into a scatter, only to have them collide once more together to create one cohesive whole. The vision came first to his mind, and he knew with a certainty that it must be seen.

     Summoning his will, he ripped apart the mists that crouded his Sight, peering into…what? The past? The present? The future? It was an unknown time, but the reality of it hit him like a hammer, threatening his fragile hold on sanity yet again. This was not the first time he had seen the vision, and even though he knew that it tore his life from him with each moment, the vision was to compelling to ignore.

     Some pieces he recognized. The planet on which his kind had settled so long ago, and which he had only just come to. Or was it that he had been here all along? Maybe he had yet to arrive, the planet beckoning to him. Whatever the case, there was a familiarity to the planet.

     The vision dove towards the yellow orb, to a cave under the purple oceans, to the moss-encrusted shelter he would soon inhabit, the one he had left so long ago, the rock he lay on at that moment. It was a chamber build not by his hands, or hands that resembled his, but by the denizens of the planet, the natural inhabitants.

     But the vision was not done. He felt the gravity crush him as he was pulled to the core of the planet, the noxious fumes seeming to crowd their way in through his very being, poisoning even those places protected by his magic. He saw that the core had broken, pieces floating out into the void, but the core remained solid, untouchable in it’s stability, while the cracks launched meteors out through the crust.

     He knew the end of the vision was near. His Sight was beginning to fail; he could feel the threads connecting him to the ether tearing. He must hold on!

     And then it appeared, glorious in it’s reflective beauty, cutting a path through the disease surrounding his cavernous home, coming to rescue him to late. The Hatchling would not save him, he saw, but he could save her.

     He was a Chozo Warrior, the last of the greatest. He would not give up.

     He would protect that which his kind had died to save.

Chapter 1 – Collision

     The void of space is a calm, safe thing. There are no floating, life-sucking creatures, no form copying parasites, nothing. Just the cold, emotionless area mankind had worshiped for so long.

     At least, for some people.

     As her ship hurtled through the sea of emptiness, Samus Aran reflected on her recent trials and how she had ended up as a bounty hunter drifting from planet to planet. She closed her eyes, and was immediately assaulted with images of her childhood: the light of dozens of fires reflecting on her bedroom window; her parents, leaving the house to investigate; the visions of monstrosities visible only to a girl of ten walking the streets gunning down all they saw; a pair of red eyes boring into her soul…

     Samus’ eyes snapped open. She didn’t want to relive that day, not right then. As far as she was concerned, the day her parents died was as far away as Planet SR388 which she had just blown to pieces. Memories of the X parasite and its role in her recent genetic make-up would never go away, just like her past…

     Angrily, she shook her head, banishing her thoughts to the recesses of her brain, and thought more about the mission at hand. After returning to the Biological Space Labs headquarters to debrief on her mission, Samus had been ordered to investigate a rumored appearance of Space Pirates the planet Proliac. The B.S.L. engineers had even gone so far as to recreate her original ship; with several modifications, of course.

     It was the eleventh day of her month long journey from what used to be SR388 to the distant system where Proliac resided. It was well within the Global Federation occupation zones, but for some reason the request had come that Samus Aran, destroyer of the Metroids and scurge of the Space Pirates, but sent in to investigate.

     She was clad in a pair of loose pants and man’s dress shirt two sizes to large, and only buttoned halfway. It was her way of relaxing when she was alone; it was a far cry from her usual strict public appearance. It was enough for being alone in her ship at staring at the stars, though.

     But gazing at the infinite ocean of space can only entertain someone for so long, and even Samus wasn’t perfect. Activating the auto-pilot, Samus pushed her chair back from the control panel and headed towards the engineering bay. There was her Power Suit, still damaged from the brief time she had been infected by the X. She had refused to let the scientists at B.S.L. get their hands on it; leaving it in a storage locker untouched was one of the conditions of her co-operation in the recent debacle on SR388. If anyone managed to find out the secrets to her Power Suit and the Space Pirates managed to get a hold of the data, her job – and surviving – would be that much harder.

     The X parasite had done a marvelous job of destroying the intricate wiring inside the suit. It’s a good thing the Chozo taught me how to maintenance this thing as well as use it, she thought to herself glumly. Memories of training with the Chozo warriors came unbidden as she picked up a screwdriver and began to tinker with the protective plates on the outside of the suit.

     The metal weighed heavily on her shoulders, the cannon even more so on her right arm. Ten straight days of evasion maneuvers wearing this ungainly suit was taking it’s toll even on her, the human girl who had lasted longer than any of the boys rescued from the destruction that was K-L5. Her muscles screamed at her with every movement, no matter how miniscule, but despite the pain flaring in her body, Samus pressed on.

     Words suddenly flared to life on the bottom of the faceplate of her helmet as the elderly Chozo warrior in front of her screeched out his orders. The translation module was the most efficient in ten galaxies, but exhaustion made it hard for the fifteen year old to read. The words vanished before she could push through the fog of her mind and grasp the meaning behind the shapes.

     The Chozo warrior stepped backwards into the safety of the viewing booth. Samus took a step forward…

     The outer casing of her chest piece came off with a blast of noxious air. Samus backed off coughing, hitting the button which activated the ventilation in the engineering bay. She cursed under her breath for forgetting to activate it sooner, and again for not taking safety precautions.

     Chuckling at her inner voice, Samus returned to her work. The damage to her suit wasn’t just a result of the X; when the B.S.L. engineers had removed her suit, they had unwittingly frayed many of the cables leading from her helmet to the arm cannon. Samus reached for her pliers…

     …and was sent flying as the automated turrets fired a concentrated attack on her unprotected back. She flew through the air, twisting in an attempt to land on her feet, but she wasn’t fast enough, crashing down on her shoulders. The force of the impact bounced her up and she flipped around, managing to at least land on hands and knees.

     There was no time to rest though, as another steady barrage of bullets came flying at her again, this time from above her position, and slightly to the left. She launched herself to the right – and right in front of a turret hidden behind a boulder. It fired right into her chest, sending Samus flying halfway across the arena. She slid to a stop right before a hole in the ground, her right arm hanging down into the opening.

     A piercing shriek rattled her head. Vaguely she recognized it as the turrets shutting down. A beaked face appeared in her vision, and screeched out its own piercing melody, and then everything faded into darkness.

     The pliers fell from her hands as nausea swept through Samus’ body. For an instance she was weightless, although she could feel the solid presence of the floor. A haze gathered at the very limits of her vision, not enough to hinder, but still enough to be noticed.

     And then Samus was slammed back into reality, the cold steel ground numbing her feet, her vision cleared. The sudden realization of weight was staggering, and she clutched the table where her Power Suit lay before she fell to the ground.

     Samus shook her head in an attempt to clear it, and muttered, “What the hell was that about?” Her hair had come out of its ponytail, and the elastic was lying on the floor. As she bent over to retrieve it, the monotone voice that was her ships computer suddenly spoke out over the intercom.

     “A one-man space pod has just entered into sensory range. Unit has been utilizing Chozo radar diversion technology, and is fast approaching. Collision ETA twenty-three seconds and counting.”

     Samus’s head whipped toward the speaker. Chozo?!? There are Chozo in this region? She rushed through the hatch into the main hallway and ran towards the cockpit, hair forgotten. Whoever it was in that pod, if he had Chozo technology, she needed to speak with him.

     The steel grating on the floor rattled with each footstep, but Samus was deaf to the clanging. All that was important was possible news of a Chozo situation.

     There was a railing surrounding the pilot’s area, but Samus merely vaulted over it, landing square in the pilot’s chair. Pulling it into control position, she deactivated the auto-pilot and grasped the controls mounted on the chair. “Collision ETA fourteen seconds and counting.”

     “Shut up, you stupid ship,” Samus yelled at the computer. “I can see the bloody thing already! I know it’s close!” And indeed she could see the threat. The pod really was Chozo in design; she recognized the Chozo language written on the side that was closest to her.

     She cranked back on the controls, and her ship immediately lifted its nose and spun to the right. Dimly she recognized it from her training, but quickly dismissed the thought.

     Unfortunately, changing the direction of her ship brought Samus closer to the pod; it crashed into the undercarriage and sent shocks through the entire ship. Samus heard several things fall from shelves and cupboards in both the engineering bay and her living quarters. But she was more worried about righting the ship and docking the pod.

     Her hands seemed to move with their own will, moving the controls every which way. The collision had sent her ship spinning to the left, but within moments she had nullified the spin and pulled a 180 to see the looping trail of the damaged pod. Easing the power up, Samus steered her way up beside the pod.

     As her computer had decreed, it was small enough for only one person, and as such had one small viewing window. It was pointing away from Samus’ vantage point, however, which made it unable for Samus to see who was piloting.

     Samus activated her radio and tuned in to the pod lying off to her right. “Pod-class unit, this is Hunter-class unit SA5. Please respond. Over.” Let’s hope his radio wasn’t damaged when he hit my ship, she thought gloomily.

     Thankfully, she got a reply back, albeit a static filled one. “SA5…Freedom Two, requesting…and medical attention. Over.” Samus shook her head. That much static at ten yards indicated a highly damaged radio. She was surprised the pilot was able to communicate at all.

     “Freedom Two, this is SA5, prepare for docking. Over.” She flipped off the radio without bothering to wait for a response. Samus guided her ship overtop of the pod and initiated the docking sequence. She re-activated the auto-pilot – set again for Proliac – and climbed the ladder to the docking bay.

     She arrived just as the docking door opened to admit the pilot of the Freedom Two.

     It was a Space Pirate.

In my blog I will not be posting about what games I just bought or beat or anything like that. I write fanfiction, will post the various chapters of my stories here. You can also find a few of them in one of the unions I'm a part of, but the definitive guide will be my blog. Thank you.

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