...

Dust trickled down from the rubble packed ceiling in fitful streams through the dim glow of emergency lighting. Samus raised herself off newly cracked floor tiles and onto her feet as she glanced around this tall, empty room in the lower reaches of the Research facility. There were balconies from a higher level looking out over the space she had just fallen through. The faint green lights of exit signs washed out to give a vague suggestion of walls down further hallways.

Ripping and scraping crashes up above indicated that the hunting metroid was still irritated that she had escaped. But then a second later those noises vanished and once again Samus was left in silence. It was gone, but if there was one of those creatures then there were undoubtably more. No one seeking to use those living weapons would release just one. However, Samus still needed to reach the rendezvous point with Nakamura's Aurora unit. If that computer was overseeing the protection of the remaining colonists then it had to be told about the metroid.

If it didn't already know.

Samus shifted the fingers of her left hand to navigate virtual menus and expanded the facility map to fill her vision. She'd fallen down into the sub-levels, but this was still part of the Chozo research building. A shining line appeared in the air as the suit plotted a course out to the contact node Nakamura had sent her towards. Now there was nothing left to do but hurry.

Her heavy footsteps echoed through the quiet halls as Samus jogged along through this manmade cavern. Then she approached at an intersection of passages and noticed several small items on the floor. Some scattered papers, a woman's shoe, and a data stylus, all kicked to the corners of the hall and forming the vague suggestion of trail off towards a nearby staircase. They were the kind of things that might be dropped if the staff of this facility were evacuating under an "Emergency Procedure A1".

Samus slowed to a stop as she glanced at her map again. A quick command to the suit sent it searching for a new set of parameters: a large room, or a blank space, armored and secure, somewhere deep under the facility that was left off the map. Somewhere the humans might be hiding their shelter. In a blink a flashing icon appeared as her visor displayed a message. "A likely site for the evacuation shelter has been located." Samus had been right, it was deep and protected. Perhaps this was location of some of civilians Aurora had safe in its charge. Or maybe these people were lost and cut off since the chaos of the first attack. Samus changed direction, turning away from her exit route.

It wasn't more than a hundred yards of walking before she began to see the indications. A set of elevator doors were twisted open, the metal crumpled and ripped. Something had made a path through the lift shaft. Something with claws that burnt like arcing electricity. Samus' felt her heart over a precipice. She turned and started to run.

A screen on the wall was still flashing the message "Emergency Shelter". There was an arrow on it pointing down the hall. Samus' boot made a print in fine grey dust that lay next to a pair of broken glasses. There were gouge marks in the white wall panels, and scratches across the floor. Then Samus turned a final corner to see the massive armored shelter door. It was mercifully unmarked by those scratches and gouges. The slab still shone of polished metal, designed to lock out the world with heavy alloys and powerful shields.

But the door was ajar.

Samus stopped running. She slowly walked forward, the silence of these tunnels growing to a ringing in her ears. Then she crossed the vault threshold into a soft warm light.

The shelter was a very large room, now dappled with strange shadows. This uncertain illumination spread out over a statue garden of fallen corpses. Samus' footsteps faintly echoed against the floor as she walked between the pale grey bodies, frozen in the collapsed rictus of their final moments. There were over a hundred here, most in two clusters, one scattered near the vault door and another pressed back against the far corner or the chamber. They hadn't gotten the door closed by the time the first metroid made it through. Then Samus looked up and saw what was causing the strange speckled light.

Over half of the overhead lights were covered with a fibrous organic webbing, the strands stretching and twisting down to form bulbous tumors. Samus' fury began to beat faster in her chest; metroid eggs. No, something different. Metroid hives, all clinging to the light fixtures for the heat and energy they provided. The plague was already multiplying. This wasn't the natural metroid cycle, if such a thing had any meaning. Someone must have brought the survivors of one of the other metroid weapon programs here to this planet. Samus looked around the ashy charnel house, her eyes taking in the clues of this slaughter. After the feast the metroids accomplished here at least one must have gathered enough energy to trigger its metamorphosis into a higher form. There was no chance of a queen already, the usual egg layers, but Samus had seen strange twists in the species life cycle before, too many times. Those various groups seeking to use them had made many terrible things.

Fury rose in her chest as her fist clenched at her side. Those idiots! Who was it this time? The Pirates, the Humans, or even the damn Chozo themselves. They kept making the same mistakes. The same mistakes over and over and every time more people died! How many hundreds? How many thousands? And she was always there to clean up after them, to bring down the necessary justice that the universe refused to supply. So much of her life had been spent dispensing justice she'd not had the chance to enjoy vengeance.

The suit noticed her base biology racing. "Alert: Agitated mental state detected. Your higher thought processes will be compromised if you continue."

She took a breath to calm herself. If the suit was unveiling new types of warnings like that then it must still be on medical watch from her injuries. As if in response, a dull ache in her abdomen reminded her of how good painkillers would feel right about now. Meditative ice chilled back around her mind, allowing the fury to drift away. She could tend this anger for later. Her glare darted around the woven husks of the hives and saw that most of the eggs had already burst, the broken shreds hanging down as evidence of the violent hatching. What remained was too small for a traditional egg, and it looked like the inside had been chambered, further subdividing the space. Whatever hatched from that would have been underdeveloped, lacking even the normal metroid ability for limited thought until it had time to grow and harden.

Not that she would give it the chance to hatch. A charged power beam blast tore through the first hive egg, followed by a missile whose detonation ripped apart the writhing half-formed thing that fell out. The wrecked shelter flashed again and again as Samus let out more shots, shredding everything that was left down to cells and fluid. Hot wind whipped around the pillars, allowing the ash shadows of the fallen to drift away into the air and oblivion. But still she knew some of the metroids had already hatched. They would be spreading out, seeking any higher organization life to drain to dust. In her current state Samus couldn't fight them. She needed to repair her suit and Aurora-929 was her best chance for that. She just needed to get to the rendezvous past a minimum of one hunting metroid she already knew was patrolling thus building.

Well, it had been over twelve hours since she'd decided to do something nearly suicidal. She was due.

Samus silently raced through the faculty. Her suit might sometimes look like a parade ground mascot, but Samus could be surprisingly stealthy in it when she wanted. Precise physical control and subtle manipulations of the surface shields meant that as she swiftly moved through the stairways and laboratory halls she made almost no noise at all. Unless she directly stumbled into that metroid again, there was no way it would find her.

That thought was still forming in her head when the crackling screech rang out with a familiarity that made her stomach drop. Samus couldn't stop the impulse to hang her head in exasperation. She'd encountered S-rank bounty hunters who were worse at tracking her down than this lone half-grown floating aberration. Seriously, had she stepped in something it could smell? The exit was still two hundred yards away, up a staircase and through a web of corridors that made Samus want to strangle some architects. She was already running at her current top speed but the little blinking dot had just appeared on her radar and it was moving still faster.

"Upgrade materials detected"

She could have kissed someone at that moment but instead Samus settled for taking a sharp right and smashing through a door not rated to withstand her current level of desperation. Inside was another lab, with the same computers and piping across the ceiling, more Chozo artifacts for federation study. Samus glanced around and recognized the delicate device of bronze colored metal in the middle of the room as some sort of Chozo observation device or a sensor. But the virtual icon was floating over it so she was already smashing her fist through the weakest looking lens before she could appreciate any more of its elegant design. The inner workings crunched under her gauntlet as dematerialization energy swirled around her arm.

"Thermal Detection equipment restored"

That was not exactly what she'd been hoping for. She'd just wasted valuable time, but her hunger for any chance of rebuilding her ice beam had been too much. Then the hunting metroid's shriek blasted from right outside and Samus' internal monologue dissolved from musings on the threat of greed into a stream of pure repeated profanity. A second later a wall exploded inwards and even profanity blinked out of her mind.

Samus dropped to the floor amid falling shattered fragments and her first charged blast struck from below to deflect the charging metroid up and over her. Samus flipped up from the ground and sprang off the back wall as the creature swerved in the air and darted back, slamming into the floor where she'd been half a second earlier. This thing was too fast, too maneuverable. And Samus had no way to really hurt it.

Then her world suddenly blinked dark. In the half second it took her to process what had happened she was blind and then glowing red orbs over sparking electric prongs flew down towards her. Samus just barely dodged that, the metroid's attack, even as another glancing strike against her armor sent pain stabbing through her core. Samus rolled to her feet as she tapped her helmet at the temple to restoring her normal vision. The thermal visor had just randomly turned on at a moment that could well have killed her. But now her sight had returned and she could see the metroid circling around through the air up near the pipe covered ceiling, preparing for another dive from among the vents and conduits. It was taking its time now. It had learned from her dodging tactics and was now limiting her options. They were always so uncomfortably quick to adapt.

Then, even as Samus was charging up another high energy blast from her power beam, the world blinked into blue and red again. Whatever was wrong with the suit, Samus was now ready for this glitch and she kept track of the creature above her even as most of it faded from view leaving only the metroid's central nuclei and hungering fangs glowed an angry red against a backdrop of bright yellow electric cables and dark purple cooling vents. And then there was that one stripe across the ceiling that was pure dripping black. Samus managed to switch her vision back again but as she did so she still saw condensation fog boiling off the surface of the liquid nitrogen pipe like clouds from a peak. It looked like hope.

Then the metroid struck from above. This time Samus couldn't dodge quickly enough but she managed to thrust out her power beam, meeting it's thunderous descent barrel to mouth. Claws locked down around her upper arm with terrible strength even as she unloaded a full power charge beam attack at point blank to the metroid's central maw. The thunderclap blast managed to stun the creature for almost half a second even as claws pierced through armor into Samus' bicep as though the Chozo metal was scrap tin. Then came the pain, all encompassing and blinding as the metroid began attempting to disintegrate her suit's shields and her own cellular makeup at the same time. Colors flashed as the nerves in her eyes spasmed in random activation while her half-consumed right hand kept firing an endless stream of energy blasts into the metroid's underbelly. She might have been screaming. She couldn't tell.

But even as half seen warnings flashed in her visor, Samus gathered herself and crouched down beneath the metroid's thrashing, crushing force. Necrotic electricity sparked across her body, racing down from the fangs. She had enough strength for just one more move before bone and metal both gave way to the universe-destroying pain.

She roared in fury and jumped straight up into the ceiling.

The metroid completely ignored the smashing impact against a heavy metal pipe and continued eating her. However, it could not ignore the frothing torrent of liquid nitrogen that splashed across its transparent shell when that pipe burst. A scream more terrible than any before shook the room as Samus fell down to the floor, her armored back thudding off the hard corner of a workstation.

The metroid flung back and slammed against the far wall, a thin ice shell growing on suddenly discolored, warped flesh. Samus rose to her knees as her gun thudded out a single missile shot, wreathed in shimmering energy. The creature was blinded, and as the explosion went off against its terrible wound it spun off through the air. The metroid staggered across the lab, smashing through machinery and desks in its maddened state. Samus raised her scarred and pitted gun for another shot and clicked down on the trigger. Nothing happened. It seemed all those flashing damage alerts in her visor had finally caught up with the action. A few yards away the metroid roared in now indescribable hunger, ready to exact vengeance on the entire world for its pain. Glass trembled and shattered, then an orange metal hand gripped down onto its largest dangling fang. Samus threw with all her strength, not letting go for a second as she smashed the creature back through the roiling waterfall of freezing nitrogen. The cold touched her hand too and Samus joined in the metroid's screaming but she slammed the creature down into the floor at the frothing terminus as the pain in her hand drove out even her instinct to breath. Spasmed tendons couldn't let go and the only thought remaining to her was her weapon-covered right arm punching down unto the metroid's ice wounded shell, over and over with all her strength.

Blood flecks covered her visor as the vessels in her eyes burst from the metroid's sparking retribution, but still her arm came down, again and again like a massive hammer. Then, finally, Samus' shattered mind reformed enough to notice that her world of pain was no longer expanding. Her impacts slowed and she saw that the gun now slid through a shattered hole in the metroid's carapace, down into the destroyed slush of its former core. The creature was dead.

The suit took the energy of its passing and even as Samus staggered to her feet it began to execute some crucial repairs. The armor around her arms glowed faintly as some of the most crippling damage began to shift and rearrange. Painkillers flooded her system and this time Samus didn't even try to argue. In that final struggle, half her body had been in that stream of liquid nitrogen and inside the armor her flesh dealt with that kind of cold no better than the metroid's. She was so tired. Her arms hung limply at her sides, completely out of her conscious control in her current state. Her feet moved and Samus wasn't sure if that was her doing or an automatic action of the suit. But the glowing line to the rendezvous point with Aurora still traced along the map and she was following it.

A thought drifted across her chemical addled brain. That had been a juvenile metroid; not even done with its first form's growth. That was the least possible threat on this planet and she was almost dead from fighting it.

The final facility door gave way after a second impact and burst open with a snap of metal bolts. Samus staggered outside into the bright sunlight. Around her, clean white sidewalks and well tended planters of native foliage taunted her in the broad open spaces between the hulking Research buildings. Everything looked so normal, like a university campus on any number of human worlds. Shadows of the long connecting bridges between some of those buildings criss-crossed the ground as Samus saw the sun was dipping into afternoon. A breeze still blew across the dusty ground.

Her head twitched to the side as the suit detected an unexpected energy signature. Even that little motion sent a spasm down her back, but Samus didn't let that compromise her guard. The target was almost ninety yards away and Samus took an even longer path, edging around a slight hill of higher elevation to get the best firing line. Belatedly, her shock-addled brain remembered that the suit's weapons were temporarily down for repairs after the metroid fight, but it turned out that mistake didn't matter. The energy signature and faint transmission were coming from one of the Pirate's mysterious missiles turned drop pods.

The strange craft jabbed out of the ground like a knife thrust down into the earth. The middle section was open and exposed, panels flung back to expose a void in the center of the missile, space for the living cargo. It was empty. Samus moved forward cautiously, although both scan and thermal said there was no life anywhere nearby. She stopped beside the missile pod, one foot up on the rim of tiny crater its fall had left in the soft soil. There were sturdy circular rings mounted the pod's frame and on the open doors. They looked like restraints.

What had been chained inside here? This had clearly landed hours ago, the wind had swept free all the light dust the impact would have kicked up, and left a faintly spreading trail of grit reaching from the crater edges. So this wasn't one of the those she'd seen fly overhead a little while ago. Was this how the Pirates had initiated the metroid attack? Suit scan gave back nothing. Some carbon-based traces but nothing that could leave a genetic signature. There was also some faint damage to the metal, scratches and dents that might match a thrashing metroid's pattern as well as a bit of corrosive pitting.

The wind kicked up again as Samus stepped back from the strange landing site. In the distance she heard the strange whistling moan of the upper canyons again. It sounded like music, lost and sad. A dirge for a world twice dead. Her fist clenched even as that motion sent pain though her badly injured nerves and tendons. No, this world had not fallen yet. She would not let that happen. Samus turned and made her way across the campus towards the blinking icon on her visor map.

It turned out Aurora's chosen rendezvous point was a small administrative building separate from the looming Research towers that dotted the rest of the facility campus. Apparently Nakamura had forwarded her clearance since these doors slid open with a cheerful chime even as Samus raised her wobbling arm to smash them. So she contented herself with just staggering in, past furniture made in imitation of dark wood and numerous posters celebrating different departments. One of featured a cartoonish figure of a smiling Chozo with huge eyes that thanked people for "chozoing" to follow proper salvage log procedures. It was actually too absurd to be offensive.

Then a final armored door, a thick affair disguised as aged mahogany, graciously swung open and Samus plodded into a large office. A little brass plaque said this room belonged to some type of president. But the only thing Samus focused on was the large computer screen that unfolded along the least cluttered wall.

A blue circle icon appeared on the screen. "Hello, Samus. I am Aurora Unit 926."

Samus slowly fell back into the president's chair. The poor piece of furniture dropped a little bit as some mechanism snapped under her weight but thankfully the rest managed to hold. However, no matter how bad she felt, she could still talk.

"Metroids on-world. Killed the Chozo laboratory shelter. Reproducing."

The little blue circle managed to look shocked and dismayed. "Oh no. How did that happen? I severed all communication between the shelters so that the discovery of one could not lead the Pirate forces to all the others, but I had hoped they had all managed to escape detection. Something must have gone wrong, no metroid should have been able to get inside those protections. It seems our tragedy continues. Thank you for telling me, Samus, I shall update the casualty report accordingly."

Apparently the suit repairs had carried on far enough to restore partial functionality to her power beam because a single shot smashed into the bookshelf on the far wall. Aurora's little circle seemed to flinch. Samus growled from within her helmet. "The metroids. Was it you? Was it the Federation? Get me Nakamura on coms right now."

The blue dot tried to put on a reassuring yet firm tone. "Unfortunately, Commander Nakamura has severed all further communications pending full repairs to the Diomedes. We have reason to believe that the Pirates managed to break our encryption shortly after his last communication with you. But I can assure you, the Galactic Federation is not responsible for these metroids. They emerged shortly after the Pirate Commander Ridly's personal transport landed on the planet. It has taken all my resources to fend them off from my primary location."

Samus remained silent. Her eyes focused on the little dot that suit scan was the room's primary camera. An any sufficiently complex life could feel the press of properly trained mind. A traditional computer wouldn't care about being stared at, but all the strengths of a bio-mind came with their own attendant weaknesses. And Samus was not yet satisfied.

After a moment Aurora spoke again, more intensely and with the slightest hint of desperation. "I am not lying to you. I could not if I wanted to, as that would be in direct defiance of my last orders from Commander Nakamura. Right now you are my only hope for my own survival and the preservation of my five thousand remaining charges. I will help you in any way I can and I will start with giving you all the resources I can spare."

Samus flinched slightly at a sudden noise as another previously hidden panel slid open in the wall beside her. That flinch was a bad sign. Her nerves were shot. Her instincts and training misfiring; this kind of twitching without any clear purpose was never useful. Then the newly exposed wall alcove cycled closed and when it opened there was a glowing power core sitting in it. Samus could have sworn that the suit scan sounded hungry as it analyzed the energy signature it gave off.

Aurora chimed. "I have seven of these lined up for transport to your current location, as well as components my records indicate could be of use to your suit in the event of various scenarios of catastrophic damage. It is in our best interest to return you to operational effectiveness as soon as possible." Aurora spoke and Samus felt some of her distrust begin to flow out of her. Of course she recognized that could also just be the increased painkillers in her blood, but if Aurora was in favor of protecting the remaining colonists then Samus was on her side at least for that. All the other answers could come second. They would still be answered. In due time the truth was always revealed. Truth lay at the end of all roads.

Samus stood up and reached out with her left hand to let the suit start dematerializing the power core while Aurora moved onto tactical matters. A map of floating blue lines suddenly flashed into existence around her, the hologram filling most of the room with a miniature version of the colony's valley. The master-computer's story of the distressingly short defense of the planet came out through hidden speakers, mixing in Samus' ears with the chimes of the suit absorbing power and components.

In the middle of Aurora's speech, a welcome message blinked in Samus' eyes as her maximum shield load continued to tick upwards. "Super Missile capability and Maneuvering Thrusters have been restored"

Samus stared past those words to look at the hologram map of the colony, tracing the web of buildings between ghostlike outlines of the canyon walls. It was like a maze, trapped within steep boundaries even before the valley split into the branching labyrinth of the lava tubes uphill. Still, as battlefields went she had seen worse. And it was not like she could run from this fight no matter what the ground looked like. Then an odd little red icon flashed into existence on the map, just within the marked bounds of the Pirate beachhead area.

She pointed. "What is-"

"Transmission from one of the emergency shelters." All the inflection dropped out of Aurora's synthesized voice. Something else was now occupying a lion's share of the bio-computer's considerable attention. Samus' heart began to beat faster. Aurora said it had cut the hardwired communications so if they could hear this transmission than the Pirates could too. This splinter fleet had shown absurdly competent computing prowess, it would crack the colonial security nearly instantly, which meant the enemy was now looking at this exact same map.

A new voice filled the office, a male human's. "Aurora, this is Shelter 9! We need help!"

Samus' internal monologue cursed at this person to shut up, remain quiet and hidden but of course that chance had already been lost. The man's transmission continued.

"The shelter's air filters stopped working several hours ago. We tried to hold on for as long as we could but as soon as we broke the shielding seal Space Pirates started moving towards our location. Aurora, Federation soldiers, anyone out there! We need you!" Some indistinct noise happened outside the programed pick-up range of the transmitting microphone. Then the man began to speak again, the sick tones of doom sinking into his voice. "I have to go, they're coming. There are a hundred and fifty three of us here. Children too. Someone help us or...They're coming."

The transmission ended.

Samus was already moving towards the door, suit plotting a route through the upper reaches of the city and determining likely sites that the colonists might hold up. She pushed the pain from her weary limbs out of her mind however the math that remained was unescapable. No matter how fast she ran the Pirates would get to Shelter 9 first. She could only hope that the civilians had enough weapons to stall for even a little bit. Once Samus arrived she should be able to provide quite a significant distraction.

She spat out orders as she punched open the office's false wood doors. "Aurora, reroute the colony distribution network to make overload power surges in that area." Anything to throw even a bit of interference in Pirate sensors, a kink in their plans. "And I demand that you-"

The bio-computer abruptly interrupted, "I am picking up a high strength Space Pirate broadcast. Unencrypted, planetary origin, human standard language."

Samus stopped and closed her mouth, cutting off her former argument. That could wait. The Pirates were not usually a lot for conversation. But this time it didn't look like Aurora was volunteering the audio without prompting. Samus turned to glare at that blue circle on the screen.

"Play it."

The sound was a cacophony of overlaid vocal tracks. The core Pirate species was innately skilled at deciphering simultaneous noise sources so they had an annoying tendency to simply play their translations on the same waveform as the original. However, by now deciphering this mess was second nature to Samus so she didn't bother looking at the transcription Aurora added at the bottom of the screen. She was too focused because this particular auditory chaos was familiar. She recognized that voice growling behind the monotone human standard translation.

"Samus Aran."

Ridley's long reptilian mouth couldn't contort in the required ways to pronounce that name but all the same through spite and fury this one almost managed it. Samus could barely hear the automatic translator program over his gnashing. Her heartbeat seemed to slow. So much for a surprise attack. The Pirates knew she was here on the planet's surface.

A deep rumble of breath vibrated the speakers and then the oddly breathy voice continued, contaminated with wet noises as a long tongue snaked around rows of dagger-like teeth. "Samus Aran. I saw you. I saw you inspecting that launch pod. Have you seen my strategy? Did it give you pleasure? Did it give you fear? You are a killer. You have killed so many of my kind. You kill those who seek the creations of the Chozo, so you destroy them all. But I am a killer too. And your blood-kind is now within my reach. I will kill them. Come, stop me. Come, fight me. I have a secret that you will want to kill me for. Now I will have your power too. Come, and we will each kill what we can kill."

In the silence that followed Samus noticed her left hand was clenched into a fist. At least that motion didn't hurt anymore. Her cellular makeup seemed to be recovering from that metroid attack incredibly quickly compared to previous injuries. That was good news. She couldn't afford any more weaknesses. In hindsight her mistake was obvious. There was a camera in the drop-pod missile; Pirate command taking track of what they'd deployed there. She'd let her pain-addled self stumble into it and thus gave away a crucial tactical advantage. It was an unforgivable mistake and one that those colonists in Shelter 9 might pay for. Ridley was ready for her now.

Her suit volunteered a message across the visor. "The fastest route is laid before you"

So she ran, out of the office and through the empty carpeted halls. Aurora wasn't sounding so chatty anymore so Samus dashed out of the administrative building amid silence and out across the open grounds of the massive Research Center campus. The shielded mass of the enormous central building loomed in the distance, hiding away Aurora and the humans she had managed to save.

Samus ran under clear blue sky. There wasn't any time to be sneaky now, if any airborne hostiles, Pirate or metroid, saw her now she would just have to deal with that. Maybe she could even lead a metroid into the pirate attack squad; cause a little more chaos in their lines. Even if Ridely had deployed the metroids, there was a decidedly poor record for that kind of people actually managing to control what those creatures did once let loose.

Then, just outside the broken and blaster p-scarred gates of the campus front entrance, Samus figured out how Ridely planned on controlling the metroids. Up ahead was another one of the missile pods, but this one had fallen rather recently. Samus stepped over the broken wreckage of defeated colonial security bots, destroyed in whatever first wave of the pirate attack had taken place here, as she moved towards the vertical missile craft that had punched through the pavement to anchor itself like a grotesque statue. This one still had its cargo, and it was still alive.

The low-caste Space Pirate writhed and struggled against the bonds that held it imprisoned in the open hull of the drop pod. Its feet were clamped together below but its wrists were fastened to the open doors, spreading the upper limbs out to the sides until they were nearly wrenched off. But more than the pain, it was fear that sent this unfortunate creature frothing and twisting in the cold breeze. Someone had told it that it was being used as live bait and this Pirate knew full well the horror that entailed.

Samus narrowed her eyes at this tactic with uncomfortably familiar respect, even as she scanned the surrounding area for sign of a potential ambush. Ridley was rarely an idiot and even his cruelty had a sick purpose. Metroids were nearly impossible to control, true, but they were easy to predict. They were motivated by hunger, so a carefully arranged pattern of live sacrifices could easily shepherd them into the desired areas and keep them there until the mission was over. After all, Pirates rarely cared about keeping planets, just staying long enough to loot them thoroughly. After that the metroids could have this world.

Then Samus took one more step forward and the Pirate's head whipped around to spot her. Excretions trailed down from its four eyes and the corners of its mouth but this individual was beyond caring about that. Samus watched its abdominal plates heave as the various lungs panted silently. It wasn't struggling against its bonds anymore, and instead just silently watched the armored warrior that had appeared before it. Samus raised her power beam and the Pirate didn't even blink as she fired. The low power blast landed beside the Pirate's head, smashing the small video sensor hidden there and cutting off Ridely's sight.

The bound Pirate let out a rattling exhalation.

Its fangs and mandibles clicked together as it spoke in its native language. "Death." It sounded almost rapturous. "It has come. It stands before me. I doubted, but they were right. We were right. And so we will be victorious. Glory is ours!" Its eyes closed. "Now I die the most perfect death, and complete the union."

For a brief second Samus just watched the Pirate as it breathed, hanging from its bonds in paradoxical comfort. Then her charged beam attack blasted its head into an organic smear. If Ridely wanted this one to be killed by metroids then Samus would not let that happen. She continued her run across the colony city. After all, her suit could consume life energy almost as well as the metroids and every little bit was needed right now to even the balance. Those colonists were being hunted.

Thoughts and mysteries swirled in her head, even as she tried to banish them. That Pirate in the sacrifice pod had only began to speak after it knew it was cut off from Command. Perhaps there was a reason why that individual had been chosen beyond expendability. An internal conflict or some defect within the Pirate forces could be very valuable. As for what that individual had been saying, well getting access to some Pirate computers might clear some of it up. Samus hoped it would. If now even the Pirates were talking in vaguely ominous mystical riddles she would just about have to scream. She'd thought they were pretty much the only creatures in her life who didn't insist on making speeches to her that way.

The suit displayed a message in her visor. "Your decision to kill was logical"

Samus didn't stop running, but she almost did. The sickening sense of suspicion surged up through her core with the familiar white cold touch of fear. The suit wasn't supposed to offer judgments of her actions. It never had before in all her decades. But ever since she arrived at this planet things had changed. These strange messages had been growing in frequency, and even the standard alerts were now tinged with unusually conversational language. Something had infected the software; some defect had emerged. Her feat pounded down on the pavement as she continued her urgent dash.

She passed through a shadow that stretched across the road. This sun dipped slowly as evening was approaching. Something had welcomed her to this planet; a triggered message. Things had only gotten worse since she woke from the crash. The odd interactions with certain Chozo artifacts; none of it made sense, and none it was reassuring. Her greatest tool, a part of her very identity for most of her life was beginning to rebel against her and all but one possible explanation were very bad. All the alerts were in Chozo language but still she could hope for that faint glimmer. She had ordered the suit to reconstruct a program.

In between breaths, Samus whispered into the helmet's sensors. "Adam, is that you? Are you waking up?"

There was no answer but silence and the sound of blood beating through her ears.

...