...

Kiber-2272 scratched his pincer along the seam of his shoulder shellplate. He thought he might be allergic to something on this planet; these itches had started up about an hour after they cracked hatch down here. Of course he could tell his company's genetyrant and most likely get an instant cure tossed his way, but there was also a faint possibility that he could be instantly purged for societal unfitness. 2272 decided that a little itching was probably fine.

With nothing better to do, he walked over to the other side of this building's third floor balcony to look down a different deserted street for a change. This planet's sun was beginning to sink, by now only a few degrees above the canyon wall. Guard duty was boring; he and his squad were missing the forage for those humans that had just popped up somewhere inside the security zone. 2272 puffed his chest out a few quick times, hyperventilating a bit to stave off torpor. Being stuck in one place meant there was no chance of looting anything that might earn him even a little bit of rank. Then he glanced over at Zegar-1161 who was squatted down beside their post's little energy barrier projector, looking out the hole they'd blown in the exterior wall to get an extra firing line. 1161 had been out on a different roving team earlier in the landing. Then that team had been eaten, so 1161 got reassigned here.

Maybe guard duty wasn't so bad.

2272 paced back to his original position as he felt his metabolism kick up to combat the falling temperature. If this human building had a purpose originally, 2272 couldn't decipher it. There were just a lot of little rooms of various sizes, all filled with soft rectangles of different sizes and configurations. Out on the balcony with 2272 there was a little table with a little green plant in a glass dome. He leaned close and tapped the glass as he looked at the feathery little leaves.

"Hey, 1161, why do you think the humans put a plant in a cage? What, did they think it might escape?"

"I think that dome's full of atmosphere that's more healthy for the plant."

"What? Why wouldn't they just re-gene it until it can survive here? They were on this planet for years. I know the humans are advanced enough to manage a little genetic redesign."

1161 made a shrugging gesture with his head. "Don't ask me. I heard other species sometimes have a weird preference for unmodified organisms."

2272 tapped the glass dome again. "Huh. Crazy."

Suddenly coms lit up and a nearby transmission sounded through both their skull implants. "Watch-post seven-alpha to seven-beta, glass tapping noise detected near your location. Report now to cancel incoming mortar strike!"

"No, no!" 2272 frantically clawed at his arm panel. "That was me! No mortar strike! No mortar!"

"Report acknowledged, strike canceled" A moment of silence followed where 2272 tried to stop vibrating with tension and relief. Then the voice in his head came back, with a bit of disappointment about missing the chance to shell his squad mates. "Tapping on glass is not one of your designated duties. This deviance will be logged on your gene line."

2272's head was now resting on his pincers. "Yes. Thank you for your societal vigilance. Post seven-beta out."

Across the room, 1161 was still watching him from the same crouched position by the shield generator. 2272 now noticed that the generator's default projection trajectory had been re-aimed down through the wall at their own forces instead of out at the enemy territory. That was probably for the best. 1161 clicked his mandibles and muttered:

"That guy's a jerk."

2272 clacked his own pincers together in a vague message of agreement that didn't actually go far enough to meet the definitions of societal treason like 1161's comment did. 1161 might still be within the seventeen hour mental grace period for survivors of squad slaughter, but that didn't mean everyone could join in on that kind of dangerous talk. After all, old Kiber-2333 was still strung up to the ceiling above their alpha post just for nodding to the last grumble within squad leader's hearing. If 2272 leaned out far enough on this balcony he could see a few of 2333's limbs tied to a few of those pillars. 2272 also hoped that the dripping he could just barely make out on those stretched joints was bio-coolant and not blood. That guy had been fun to talk with when they pulled duties together. At least he didn't whisper about the two gods all the time like a lot of the old timer Kiber clan folks did.

The sun was almost set now, down over the east cliffs, and 2272's post was looking right into it. However, this was still that awkward time of day where he couldn't quite switch over to augmented vision modes without ending up even more blind than he currently was. So he just flexed his exoskeleton again and continued trying to pick out the difference between dead black building shadows and open streets lit with burning red shafts of light.

After a few more chilly minutes, 1161 spoke up again. "Those god-painters made another picture back behind our lines."

Despite himself, 2272 flinched at that conversational voice, still on edge from the mortar threat. He said, "Yeah, I saw it during the last squad cycle." A simple report of personal experience, a completely valid and unthreatening utterance. He glanced down at his arm panel and wondered if there was a way to quietly see if it was transmitting any sort of monitoring data to the genetyrants.

1161 continued to talk in his same slow way, somehow managing to hunch down on his heels even further. "There are more of the painters in recent months." Also true and therefore safe, though the statistics here were getting dangerously hard to prove with scientific accuracy. Conversational audits were a dangerous headache. However, apparently 1161 didn't care about that. "They've taken what we found out in space as a sign that the fleet's on a deterministic mission. That the cube, and the thing was in it were the start." He paused and looked over. "Do you think they could be right about it?"

That was a question: danger, danger! Unscientific superstitious consideration! Even a mental grace period couldn't excuse that kind of talk if it got logged. 2272 started to hyperventilate, his thorax shifting in and out as all his air intakes gasped. But then other thoughts filtered into his head. He'd heard this kind of talk before around the fleet members. And the number of science-heresy punishments he'd seen meted out didn't even come close to the number of offenses in even his own personal experience. Could leadership be going light on that doctrine, letting the god-painters slide? Oh no, even that thought was hearsay! But wait, if they actually weren't enforcing the doctrine then doubting their enforcement wouldn't be hearsay, right? Or would it...

Kiber-2272 pressed his head against his pincers again. This planet was going to drive him crazy. At least up on the ship there were too many of his clan for the small number of tasks so most of the time he could just find a nice bit of wall to crawl up and hang on to sleep for a few days. Now he had to sit here looking out at this empty city and listen to this Zegar clan reject try to get him purged. All the humans were dead or hiding, so it was just hours of watching wind and dust and that rocking streak of burning light that was racing towards the alpha post.

Wait, come again?

The violent explosion rocked the entire building. Shards of cement and metal blasted across the balcony, pinging off 2272's plates even as a few slivers found joints to bite into. Too late his instincts kicked in and 2272 ducked down behind the railing, just in time to limit his view of the walls around alpha post slowly crashing down.

1161's shield generator was now humming, the glowing purple barrier facing the completely wrong direction towards their back lines. "I knew it!" he yelled with inappropriate triumph. "They're shelling us! That mismatched mutant's had it out for all of us and now he's had a complete programing breakdown!"

2272's vision was slowly refocusing after the blast's pressure wave. Shock was also begining to wear off and let the pain signals through. Ow. He grunted, "No, it wasn't a mortar-"

"They said I was showing behavior fault with illogical distrust of authority! But I knew! I was-"

"No! That wasn't us! It was..." 1161's memories of a second ago swirled, a distant figure briefly glimpsed. Something running towards them. "Orange!"

1161 slowly swiveled on his crouched heels to look over. "Orange," he slowly repeated. Then another huge missile explosion rocked their building, sprouting cracks through the exterior walls. People were now firing blaster shots over in alpha post. There was a lot of yelling. "Um, what...?"

A string of smaller explosions went off like a staccato drumbeat. One of them knocked a hole in the far wall, carrying a bit of floor down with it and giving both guards a clear view down into alpha post. The whole place was blown up or on fire, but now they could see why.

"Oh," 1161 said.

She was killing everyone. The six foot tall orange and red metal destroyer danced and jumped, her arm letting out a never ending stream of brilliant death. It was that Hunter, and she was here. 2272 had a thought drift past his mind that this really wasn't fair. No one had even told him she was in this star system. But combat conditioning kicked in against all conscious thought and he opened his pincers, tentacles reaching up to fire the grafted blaster guns. To his own surprise one of his shots actually almost hit her. But then that right hand of doom turned his way and a hail of response fire smashed through Beta Post.

Off to his left he saw 1161 fling backwards and flop down to the ground, limbs sprawled and twisted. 2272 huddled behind a corner of reinforced wall, still firing off wild blaster shots down towards alpha post even if two of his eyes were squeezed closed and there were a faint high-pitched shriek coming from his mouth that absolutely could not be mistaken for a battle cry. Then the explosions started again and he just leaped up onto the nearest wall and clung there shaking like a newly shed pupa above a hungry larva bed. His face was pressed flat to the off-white paint so he could only see flashes of angry light as booms and shudders sent everything trembling around him.

Then there was one last crash of breaking cement and 2272 felt his bit of wall begin to slowly tip forward as he clung to it. The wall fell and then it hit something hard, followed by a grinding bouncing slide which carried 2272 down some rough slope head-first. The jostling stopped with an abrupt thud that almost almost shook him off. However, through all this he simply refused to move, still clinging to his little patch of wall in a hunched ball. The shooting had stopped, but there was the sound of armored human boots rushing towards him. 2272 closed all his eyes, but then those boots continued running on by.

Several minutes later 2272 finally felt capable of looking up from his little bit of wall. The off-white panel was now lying at the bottom of a rubble pile that used to make up the right wall of alpha post's landing and the left half of beta post's building. 2272 was shaking and trembling but from the look of everyone else around here that was the absolute best he could have hoped for. Part of old Kiber-2333 was still hanging from the ceiling, but only part.

Then up on their old third floor post Zegar-1161's corpse flipped back up to his feet and both 2272's hearts nearly went into fibrillation.

Zegar-1161 casually called down, "Hey Kiber, is the coast clear?"

Once 2272 confirmed that he was not in fact dying of shock he yelled back up, "What...?! I thought you were dead!"

"Nope! Just flopped over so she stopped shooting at me. Seemed sensible at the time."

"But...But...That's the most flagrantly treasonous...!" 2272 stopped sputtering as he belatedly realized that his own actions weren't much better. If this went up for review the genetyrants would be purging both of them. So he just sighed. "You're not hurt?"

"Yeah, no. I considered cutting between some of my plates to let a little bleeding sell the performance since there weren't any bodies nearby to swipe some blood from, but I figured that would take too much movement."

"...How exactly did you survive your previous squad wipe?""

1181 shrugged as he scrambled down the scree slope of partially collapsed building. "Eh, just lucky I guess."

2272 started walking off and then jerked back as he realized he was stepping in the burning remains of one if his own squadmates. That organ wasn't even supposed to be flammable. Lucky, the guy said. 2272's head hurt.

1161 moved over to stand next to him as they both looked out the open back of ruined alpha post, through the streets claimed as official staging territory. "So, should we call that in?"

A white flash and a thudding boom rang out in the distance deeper in the secure territory. 2272 glanced down at his arm panel. It was blinking furiously "I think they know already. Best to leave comm channels open. You know, for important orders and things."

1161 glanced over to his side and bent down to pick something up out of the rubble. His tentacles stuck to a little glass dome and lifted it up in his pincer. "Hey, Kiber! Your plant survived!"

That was when 2272 decided to just start walking off into the distance.

...

Samus stuck to corners and overhangs, knowing better than to trust the evening shadows to hide her from enemies who would almost certainly have thermal scans. Her attack on that guard post should send things scrambling and hopefully buy the colonists some time in the confusion. The Space Pirates loved their schemes and plans but they didn't tend to deal well with a sudden disruption thrown into the middle of it. Samus wasn't one to boast, but she was quite widely recognized as the biggest disruptor in this galactic arm and there was an extensive record, both military and legal, to prove that. If she made a big enough fuss here, caused enough damage, Ridely wouldn't be able to resist diverting all his forces to put down this threat to his authority.

She just hoped it would be enough.

This whole corner of the city showed the unmistakable signs of Pirate despoliation. Here, where the colony valley narrowed into the mouth of the lefthand volcanic canyon, every building had been scarred. The windows were smashed, doors ripped off, and piles of treasured belongings lay broken in the streets where the raiding squads had thrown them in their search for valuable equipment. At least now that she was past that first security checkpoint she was in a belt of no-man's land. The Pirates' main landing and staging point was somewhere up that canyon, in an open patch of land a safe distance away from this tangle of colony streets. The suit had briefly spotted at least two ships and some unloaded machinery during Samus' fall from orbit.

That is, if she could trust the suit's report anymore. Samus felt dread sink through her veins even as she ran. This planet was doing something; there was some power at work here and it was touching more than just her. It felt like prophecy. Three species, all now wielding Chozo technology, had come here to fight among the old masters' broken leavings. Another part of Samus' mind noted that she had just counted herself as a species separate from humanity, but there wasn't anything to do about that right now other than add that to the long list of things she should probably discuss with a professional at some point. By now it was a very long list.

Samus glared at the world as she darted across a street for more cover, avoiding a Pirate transmission signal she'd just picked up over in the other direction. She couldn't afford this lack of focus. Not now. There was a mission. She couldn't be shaken. That would mean death, for her and thousands of others. No, death was not something to fall victim to, it was hers to deal out.

Then she glanced up to see a crude skull painted on the building wall right in front of her. Her eyebrow raised. Now that was just excessively atmospheric for her inner monologue.

And it made no sense. Scan said this paint was only a few hours old, placing completion long into the Pirate occupation. The image, however rough, was clearly a human skull but there was no way any colonist was running around the streets to do some graffiti. An average GF trooper probably wouldn't be surprised, putting the death-symbol down as some pirates partaking in a standard type of warrior artwork found in any occupation. Humans had been doing the same for their whole history, against whatever enemy they fought. But the Pirates weren't human. They didn't make art. That instinct was purged from their society in the interest of scientific supremacy.

No, this was something else. Samus touched the fingers of her left hand to the wall as she followed the trails of irregular black paint that led back within this block. She remembered the Command Ship up in orbit. She remembered rough bipedal figures colored onto those walls. These Pirates were different.

Very different. Samus emerged into the back alley and her breath caught as she saw a thousand paintings covering every surface. Some were abstract, some were snatches of Pirate writing, and some were clearly meant to represent some particular Pirate clan body type. Nearly everything was in simple black, however here and a while there was a small mark of blue, or a single line of red. An experiment in color? Above this all, someone had knotted endless sheets of torn cloth into crude patchwork canopies stretching across the alley in multiple layers wherever they could find a pipe, window, or ledge to attach it too. Down at ground level it was like being in a painted cave. Far above, stars began to appear as the sun set through the thin atmosphere.

Samus knew she didn't have time for this. She needed to be running now, to find those desperate colonists before the Pirate forces did. But despite the urgency this was a mystery and she could feel every instinct of her mind fighting her better reason. There was a meaning here, something screaming at her and she just couldn't see it. This was important.

The next painted figure was tall and hunched, with long delicate fingers on huge hands. Samus recognized that: Chozo. The Pirates were drawing pictures of Chozo, sanding and kneeling, alternating above the Pirates and beneath them. There was more writing here, crudely scrawled but still legible. Samus could make out the scattered words. "Death", "Change", and "Beginning". Then there was something new, a word in Pirate script that neither she nor the suit's memory banks recognized. It looked like "death-supreme-physics-commander". The only translation Samus could think of was "god". The Pirates didn't have any word for such an idea; the very concept was highest heresy. Or at least it had been.

Then the city's electric lights flicked on, bright illumination suddenly throwing striped of dense shadow as the remaining colony grids flipped into their night mode. Sickly orange light filtered down to the painted alley from higher bulbs. In this new atmosphere the paintings abruptly changed before Samus' eyes. Directly in front of her, on a solid wall at a T-intersection, a dense maze of black paint suddenly faded from focus in favor of what was not painted. The darkness highlighted the space between the lines instead of the drawings themselves. Samus stepped forward and to her horror she could read that absence of paint. Hidden within the crude abstract drawing was a white space forming single perfect Chozo word.

It said, "Rise".

Samus' proximity radar lit up. Multiple targets; movement everywhere around her. She raised her gun and spun, only to see heat signatures register in every doorway and shadow. Pirates, at least ten of them to both her left and right. Samus gritted her teeth; she'd let herself wander into a trap. A single second had elapsed and, the foremost of them had only just begun to make their first motions but a cruel radiance was already building in the barrel of Samus' weapon. In that glacial moment before combat all her doubts and recriminations cooled and crystalized into the calm and perfect clarity of battle. Samus breathed out. This she understood.

The closest Pirate raised a small glowing blade in one clawed fist. Samus raised her gun. Then the Pirate smoothly sliced off its own hand.

Despite herself, Samus froze. That was not something she'd been ready for. Within that dearly bought second the injured Pirate fell down to its knees, and behind it all the fellows toppled too in a sweeping wave. They were kneeling, exposing their necks to their most deadly enemy and behind her Samus could hear the other group following suit, falling into abject genuflection. She could feel her own heartbeat echoing in her ears. Something very wrong was happening here. A thin trickle of bloody ichor slowly made its way across the cement towards her boot.

"Hunter." The word crackled and chirped out in the Pirates' language. That was what they called her; the title their kind had awarded her many years ago. One Pirate slowly rose, head still down, and slowly pushed away its mutilated comrade. This pirate stayed half crouched, always aiming the back of its neck at Samus' weapon as it shuffled.

"It was sung you would be here. The end must always be at the beginning."

All the varied motley of Pirates slowly began to back up while still staying low, claws and exoplates scratching against the cement. Behind her, Samus could hear the other group doing the same down the other alley. She took a step forward, her weapons still ready to blow the nearest three pirates to shreds if they twitched but still she did not fire. Pirates never trusted prophecy. And they didn't sing. The entire species had been under supreme order for decades to kill the hunter Samus Aran on site and yet this particular group was bowing before her. Confusion was like a burning itch in Samus' brain. She had to understand. She had to know.

The Pirates continued, "Escape is at hand. We will follow the angels."

Samus stopped before a new set of paintings and all of a sudden many things became terribly clear. There were two humanoid figures side by side: one red and one blue. Their shoulders were oversized globes and each only had fingers on their left hand. An angular slit served them both for eyes and the right arm was a cylinder. Each stood on a throne of scrawled metroid bodies. Samus recognized these paintings; that outline. It was the suit. It was her.

The hissing and clicking grew as more joined in. "Science is dead and entropy is the killer! But we will escape!"

Beside the blue painting were rough images of Pirates, hands outstretched to grab the blue lines that came off that Samus. By the red figure were only skulls. In the alley the Pirates' cacophony grew into something like chanting. The pirate language didn't have a word for good or evil. Science was their only good, entropy the ultimate evil. But their species had been broken by Phazon, twisted by a mutagen and then abandoned to assault, defeat, and blockade. And Samus realized that only one of these two paintings was actually her. The blue copy was her dark Phazon clone, the mother of the Pirates' recent brief ascendancy. It seemed they still worshiped her, even in destruction.

Samus was their devil, and she had won. The god of Phaaze was dead and in that fall these withdrawn addicts had found some new focus, a new drug. In the absence of god they had found religion. And now they wrote a single word in Chozo script over and over between the marks of paint.

"Rise" a hundred times across the walls.

Well, if she was the demon then she might as well play the part. Samus raised her weapon and it made faint humming noises as the metal and crystal structure shifted into missile mode. This strange cult was a dangerously chaotic force thrown into the middle of this crisis. It was even possible that they had been the ones who'd release the metroids, since they painted them on the walls. Were the metroids the angels the cult would follow? But even if the cult caused confusion and violence among the Pirate forces it wasn't worth it to allow them to live. A predictable enemy was more valuable. Ridley might even thank her for eliminating these wretches, underneath his overwhelming rage at another offense of course.

As if it could hear her thoughts, the nearest pirate chittered and inched forward, pressing his head nearer to Samus' right arm; nearer its oncoming destruction.

A sudden motion warning chirped on the suit's sensors: big, and high above. Samus whipped her weapon up in time to spot a tiny gap in the roofs and overhanging fabric canopies. A small patch where the stars above briefly blinked out in a rush of black wind. Her first thought was a ship, but that was wrong. It was the shadow of enormous wings. Ridely was on the move, racing past her off into the distance. He was heading towards the transmission site.

Samus slammed through the cultish pirates, shoving one aside hard enough to hear cracking exoskeleton. The others scattered as she began firing a wild stream of quick blasts, still racing out of this damn makeshift temple. Her teeth ground in her head. She was an idiot. She'd let her curiosity draw her away from the mission and she'd done so even as she knew it was happening. She'd abandoned innocent lives for some paltry mystery. Unforgivable.

She burst out onto the street and her boots scraped across the pavement as the took the ninety degree turn. Her charged blaster shot tore off a burning path into the night sky, aimed at Ridley's trajectory but in fact just a desperate attempt to grab his attention. No one fired back or acknowledged her. The distant shadow was already racing off, too fast and ever lower as it came in for a landing behind a far off building. Samus screamed as she ran down the silent street, and then cursed herself still more for wasting oxygen her muscles needed. The suit was still damaged and she was still so slow, barely passing thirty miles per hour. The little destination icon approached at a glacial creep.

Then the colonist distress broadcasts began again, leaping out on all frequencies.

"Oh god! Help up! They're-!"

Then the transmission quality dropped and all that could be heard was shouting and screams over static.

...

Samus entered the building's shattered front entrance to the music of terrible silence. Fires were still burning on furniture near the air system vents, where the interior air had enough oxygen to encourage growth. Her footsteps crunched across the trail of devastation, over shards of broken columns and past the gouges dug through the corridors. Each door was ripped off its hinges; blasted by fire, lasers, or simply incredible strength. They were the signs of a huge creature moving through a building designed for a much smaller species.

Then, on the next floor, the blood began.

Suit scan picked up defensive marks, and Samus saw the signs of intelligently placed firing positions. These colonists had fought well and bravely. The defense had lasted for sixteen seconds.

She entered a large carnage strewn room with a high round ceiling. She noted that several of the door in here had their locks shot off from this side, as if there had been multiple locked escape routes which were pursued by Pirate forces. It was still possible a few of the humans had managed to get away. It was their city after all, they knew it better than the invaders. They might be able to hide.

But Samus did not follow those trails. Instead she simply stood amid the scattered gore in this wide main room. She was staring the hole that had been torn in the building side: an exit wound where the Pirate commander had decided he wanted quick access to the sky. Beside it was a remaining intact wall, oddly pristine and undamaged save for the huge words painted there. Samus' emotions were deadened, she was no longer astonished by the Pirates' artwork. The blood had not even had time to darken yet.

The message was painted and gouged in equal measure, as if applied by massive sharp claws. It was in human standard script, a courteous gesture. It said, "You were late."

...

The escape path Samus chose to follow first turned out to be an unlucky one. These humans hadn't made it farther than three hundred yards before the five of them were gunned down in a stairwell. There were two more paths back at the massacre site that she needed to check, but Samus instead found herself exiting the blackened and bloody stairs. She slowly walked out onto an undamaged balcony. Cold wind brushed the suit's metallic skin. The night was dark, though two of the planet's small moons were currently making their orbits. A few undamaged streetlights shone up from the street below.

Off in the distance at the upper edge of the colony city, between two taller buildings, Samus could just barely see an open space shining with blinding white lights. From the blackened ground there she supposed that it might have been a park originally, some green space at the mouth of this canyon's narrowing, but now it was a burned and ashy secondary Pirate staging ground. There were some forces moving supplies and machinery around out there, thought too far for scan to give many precise details. She had a firing line from here. Of course their mortars would reduce this building to rubble shortly after, but there were always choices. Where there was life there was choice.

Then a thundering sound rolled out over the valley's cliff-made horizon like the growling roar of a distant furnace. All of a sudden, the blighted city shuddered further under an earsplitting boom. Samus didn't need the suit's sensors to analyze that for her. That was the sound of a ship rapidly decelerating after a top speed drop from orbit, its speed-of-sound wavefront finally catching up to the destination. But as always, sound was too slow. The new shadow already hung in the air over the edge of the canyon wall, moving smoothly against the bright clear stars behind it.

Samus watched the ship uneasily as it slowly descended towards the burned park where the Pirates had cleared their secondary landing area. The air still thrummed with the sound of those distant engines. The ship was big, far bigger than Samus would have expected to land given how afraid of Diomedes the fleet seemed to be. Something important was being transported in there, something that that needed to happen now rather than later. And yet it was landing here in the city, instead of at the main staging area with Ridely's ship. Strange.

She pressed against the walls of her hiding place, knowing that if she was detected now it would be her death along with everyone on the planet who was depending on her. Her curiosity had already cost too much today, but she still needed to know what the Pirates were doing. That was the only way she could destroy them. And she would, one by one until this planet was once more purged off all who had set foot here.

Samus couldn't see the ship once it landed behind those buildings, but the commotion she could see moving around down there in the burned park suggested that the main exit hatch was somewhere just out of view. She should be able to see what they offloaded. Sure enough a small platoon of guards formed up and a moment later clouds of ash and dust billowed up in the spotlights as pressurized air blasted from of the out of view ship. First into view was a stomping squad of armored Elites. Samus had been right, this was something important.

Then her heart stopped beating. The next far off figure walked into view alone, made tiny by the distance. All the same Samus recognized the shape instantly. There was no way that she could not. The slightly hunched posture, the long robes, and enormous hands; a living Chozo shuffled along behind the armed Pirate Elites.

A silent roar was surging in Samus' ears, deafening her thoughts. The lone impossible Chozo was marched along, followed by the watch of a full platoon of massive battle droids who followed behind, weapons trained. Then the prisoner detail crossed that sliver of Samus' view and were gone. Samus was left in the dark and the starlight.

It was impossible. The Chozo were gone; vanished, departed. The last vestigial trace of that long fallen empire and had been lost decades ago. Every space-faring race in this galactic arm had been hunting for any clue and had found nothing to explain it. She had found nothing. Thirty years since she'd seen the last living members, and across the galaxy she'd only found statues, bones, and ghosts. The entire fading race had simply left, off to their mysterious new journey. All that remained were machines, carved prophecy, and one half-breed hatchling wandering around their discarded leavings.

It was impossible, and yet a living Chozo had just walked in front of her. That was what the Pirates had found. Somewhere out in space this fleet of cultists and madmen had stumbled onto the trail of the departed Chozo masters. That mysterious cube on the Command Ship hadn't been empty, it had been exited. The Pirates didn't need to rip apart old technology when they had a captive they could enslave to make new.

Peaceful certainty returned to Samus' mind. This was a clear purpose. Everything in her existence had led her to be perfectly situated in this one moment. She would rescue this prisoner and die or live in the process. There were no decisions to be made here. She tilted her helmet to look off over her right shoulder. The visor's enhancements sliced through the dark night and so she could clearly see the head of the distant mountain statue just barely preening over the north canyon wall. Somewhere in her memory, her adopted family were nodding their approval.

These pirates would learn once more to fear the wrath of the Chozo.

Samus took one step back and a tiny icon blinked in the corner of her vision. It was a transmission; a new transmission. It was faint, and garbled from bouncing off canyon walls, but it was there.

A voice broke in, small and scared and unmistakably human. "Hello? Aurora Unit? I...I need help. We got away but... but my mom's hurt. We ran to the Ruins, the Chozo place, past the locked door. Everyone else...We're hiding. I went somewhere else to make this call but...I need you to find me. There are things out there. Someone? Please. I'm Roger. Help."

Then the signal was gone and Samus stood alone in the dark.

...