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.