Part 1

Three months after the destruction of the planet Zebes at the hands of Samus Aran, the universe felt that it was safe. Interstellar commerce once again began to boom and the people became content. The Space Pirates had been quiet for awhile, and it was doubtful that they would ever commit to another incursion into Galactic Federation space.

Equipped with high-yield tactical missiles, anti-cruiser missiles, and twin anti-cap-ship beam cannons, one missile boat had the ability to destroy an entire grade-B+ military base in just under five minutes. The craft was upgraded with a series of anti-fighter turrets and a squadron of G7 assault bombers. The first missile boat prototype developed was christened ‘Ragnarok.’

The Ragnarok was ordered to undergo testing in the Gamma Krilos quadrant, light-years away from the closest populated system. A small research facility was constructed and within five months, the prototype had been completed and was ready to commence testing.

Results of the first trial runs were astounding. The Ragnarok possessed the capability to knock out half of the Federation’s operational attack fleet in less than a week. Security in the area was tightened, but researchers feared that it was only a matter of time before the Space Pirates got word of the Ragnarok....

Captain Alan U. Sherman looked out of the Ragnarok’s main viewport and watched the stars float by on their never-ending trek through the darkness. Faint pinpoints of light, these wanderers were about as dim as the three black targets that every so often blotted out a distant solar system. He had ordered that they maneuver the ship so that the targets’ silhouettes were in front of the nebula some few hundred light years away which filled the entire viewscreen in a brilliant blue glow. This tactic would allow the targets to be more easily viewed and therefore easier to hit by gunners using manual firing techniques.

Sherman had been given command of this, the first missile boat ever created. He hadn’t expected the position, and hadn’t even known about the project until several months ago; the Vendetta project had been signed and sealed under closed doors. When he’d arrived at the research station with several hand-picked crew members, he was surprised to discover that the craft wasn’t even completed. He spent the next few weeks surveying the cigar-shaped Ragnarok and studying how she worked. His crew now new almost as much about the ship as the very men who had built it.

He turned to his first officer, Wilard Rouskov. He was from the old Russian colony on Terra Prime, one of the first extrasolar colonies developed by the humans. He was a fine officer, and there wasn’t a better man for the job. “Take us about. I want to knock out targets one and two with the forward missile bays and the third one with broadside cannons.”

“Aye, sir.”

The missile boat rumbled as it’s engines kicked into high gear and twisted the craft in a corkscrew at a 70 degree angle.

“Load tubes one and two, charge starboard gun turrets. Load one anti-cruiser missile into one tube, and a grade-A warhead into the other. Fire on my command.” Sherman looked at the strategic display, a holographic panel that slid down from the low ceiling and in front of his face. The three targets were in red and the central green dot represented his ship.

The senior weapons officer, Tiy, an Andolian warknight, reported in. “Weapons bay reports missile tubes one and two are primed and ready to fire. All gunners are readied and locked on target.”

“Fire.”

Two pale gray canisters shot out onto the forward viewscreen and zeroed in on the targets. The missiles increased their speed as they locked on and twin bright orange flares lit up the sky when they hit. The viewscreen panned right and up to bear with the seven pairs of laser shots that streamed off the side of the Ragnarok and into the third target. It was all over three seconds after Sherman had given the order to fire.

“Good work. Turn on the cloaking device and wait for further orders from Base2.”

Security Chief Lennon Markeb sipped at the scalding hot coffee cup and looked at the data reports from the latest tests. Things were definitely looking up. They reported a 30% increase in efficiency for the Ragnarok spacecraft and tomorrow’s reports would probably show even better results. Adding the two prototype tracking systems and the jamming device had definitely been for the better, despite the uneasy feelings of his superiors. Markeb was certain that the ship would work fine.

Shifting the coffee cup from his left hand to his right, Markeb reached for a powdered donut from a box that had been specially brought for him on the last transport. It was too damn hard to find good food this far from home, especially breakfast foods.

Markeb was opening his mouth to eat when his computer chirped. Green letters scrolled across the screen.

Incoming Message

Cursing, he stuffed the donut in his mouth and clicked on the control panel, taking a sip of coffee as he did so. The letters were immediately replaced with amber numbers and symbols. “What the...”

Transmission Completed

Puzzled, Markeb scratched his head and was about to ring up his CO at Base1 when the station suddenly shook. He spit out his breakfast, the hot coffee scalding his mouth and spilling all over his control panel. It slowly dripped onto his lap. “Damnit!”

Gripping the chair and choking, he turned to look out the side window and saw the five R-42 picket craft flying in attack formation, apparently shooting at something. They were flying close together and every so often, they would let loose a series of green plasma bursts. Suddenly, a blue-white wave of energy shot out from somewhere in front of the nebula and engulfed the pickets. Markeb had to shield his eyes from the bright flare. When he looked back, the craft were gone.

Markeb’s arm shot out for the communications panel. “This is Chief Markeb to Ragnarok! Ragnarok, do you read?”

Static.

He turned to his tactical display panel. The Ragnarok’s symbol, a bright red ship, was sailing off-course. The few craft that were around it turned yellow and then disappeared from the screen. “Ragnarok, you are leaving the training area. Return or we WILL use lethal force to stop you!”

A response, but not from the missile boat. It was Leu Almott, one of the station’s support personnel. “Chief! The Ragnarok just fired on our pickets! She was doing regular training maneuvers when she suddenly turned on the support ships and blew them out of the sky! Our pickets didn’t stand a chance.”

“Launch Alpha Wing! Try and disable the craft!”

“We already did. They should be within firing range of the target any time now.”

“Good.” He punched controls on his monitor. “Show me the Ragnarok.” The camera shifted over to show a chunk of the nebula. There was nothing there.

“That’s what I was just about to tell you,” Leu said. “She’s cloaked, so we can’t get a decent lock on her OR know where the hell she is. Even when she’s flying in front of the nebula. I’d say our men did TOO good of a job constructing this baby.”

“Ah, hell. Do we have any base guns still operative?”

“Negative, sir. They were knocked out a few seconds ago by the Ragnarok’s first volley. We can’t shoot or maneuver worth chopped flan.”

“But she didn’t destroy us...” Markeb glanced back at the viewscreen. The five jet-black assault fighters zeroed in on the target. It was unfortunate that they couldn’t see their target. The security chief could hear faint commands over the intercom as he tried to contact them. They immediately increased their intensity when a bolt of blue-white light engulfed half the squadron. “What the hell? We’re shooting at phantoms!”

Then they were gone.

“What is this?” Markeb said, picking himself up off his chair. “She can’t fire when cloaked, let alone HIT anything! It’s hard enough to see your target!”

“Must have been the new tracking systems we installed last night...” Leu said, glancing off to the side. He couldn’t muster the courage to meet the stern gaze of his superior officer.

“Alright. Get me a line straight to headquarters. Tell them that Vendetta has been compromised and we assume that the Ragnarok has defected. We need a tactical squadron deployed and sent after her on the double! Give me the fastest and strongest ships you can find. Oh, and get me one other person. There is only one man in the galaxy who can find our ship.”

“Don’t tell me... I think she’s on the vacation colony, Shore.”

“Exactly. Leu, we need Samus Aran.”

Chapter 002
Contact... by FireNexus

Samus Aran was on vacation. A shock to those who knew her, and piece of useless information to those who didn't. But, as always, she was a bit busy working. her suit had blown a servo, and a few of the weapons upgrades were malfunctioning. Served her right for keeping those upgrades from Zebes. They may have been chozo weapons, but they were too damn old.

She thought she had fixed the faulty servo, and was testing it on the VR pad. When she moved the arm in question, the suit corresponding, she saw a shock and the piece of shit fell off. She was beginning to get pissed off. It had been hree days since she started the work, and it just wasn't wanting to get fixed.

"Listen you little shit head, I'm done with your games," she said, talking to the suit as was her habit.  "Now work, or I'll send you to Houston, and he isn't as patient with you as I am."

Amazingly, the blown servo's nanobots went to work. The suit's limited AI had picked up the threats from Samus, and it remembered the damage it felt last time she sent it there. Within minutes the suit was fully functional and ready for service. Samus felt glad about investing in the nanobots, and the new AI. Others hadn't thought ahead that far, which meant more profits for her. And of course, more profits meant she could put more into her suit.

After careful inspection of the upgrades, she found them useless, all except the Hyper beam. But, that weapon brought back bad memories, and was really too powerful for Samus to realistically use in battle.

After cursing about the upgrades, which she would have to replace, a call came in on her private frequency. After activating her holo disguise, Samus answered the call. On the other side was the missions commissioner, Jim McLellen.

"Samus Aran, I'm glad to see you," said the friendly looking man on the screen.  "There is a mission marked TOP LEVEL here for you. With you I'm becoming a relay lately, since all the applicable missions are TOP LEVEL."

"Don't worry about it Commish," Samus replied, in her artificial male voice. "How's Martha?" she asked

After a few minutes of chatting about politics and each others lives, the Commissioner relayed her to the appropriate security level head. "Ahh, Samus, you can drop the holo disguise now, no one is looking." said Mike, the TOP LEVEL guy. He had found out when someone laced Samus' drink with Spice a few years back, and he came to her rescue. That guy got the beating of his life after that, from both of them. The holo disguise dropped. "They briefed you on project Vendetta after you got back, correct?"

"Yeah, they decided to throw together some heavy technology to fight the Pirates, in hopes of beating them," replied Samus. She thought that the whole project was stupid.

"Well, the throw together was either stolen, or defected. And there is a lot of weaponry on that ship,  "he told her in a calm tone. "But the ship isn't the biggest problem. A second one is almost completely rebuilt. You see, we had to find a compact power source. And we found a bio-hyper generator that we installed..." Before the sentence was completed, Samus cut him off.

"You don't mean..." Samus' face had an astonished look on it.

"Not the whole thing, but the DNA is their, and that's the major problem."

"I'll take the case, sir."

Samus told her suit that their vacation was cut short. She had some personal business to attend to.

Chapter 003
Strange Company by nameless

It was certain that other hunters had been alerted to the crisis, and Samus was sure that this could be the next big pay out. She looked out of the window of the Grande Mirage hotel one last time before she gathered her suit and called for her ship to be prepared. No matter, with another good hit, she would probably be able to buy a good chunk of Shore. Blasting off into the sky, she watched beautiful sand bars give way to vast oceans until Shore became yet another star in the vastness of space.

The Ragnarok had disappeared in quadrant C of the Alpha sector and was believed by the federation to be heading towards Epsa Cos. She reached the edge of the Alpha sector at around 0600 hours. It was an empty area, strewn here and there with a few asteroid fields, and a few lone stars. Samus suspected that the Ragnarok would attempt to avoid the southeast spice shipping lanes. She would intercept them near the West Belt, an immense asteroid field that extended through four contiguous sectors. Once she reached her target destination, she powered down her engines and switched to pulse detonation thrusters.

The detonators drummed in the background as Samus toggled through her various censor arrays. To kill the time, Samus went over some of the mission files that the coordinator had uploaded into her "Active Missions" folder. She currently had four of them. It wasn’t unusual for Samus to take on several missions at once. She selected the file entitled 'Vendetta' and looked over the specs for the Ragnarok. Amazing stuff!

Apparently, the Ragnarok had been outfitted with a bio generator of sorts which had been biomechanically engineered using DNA from an undocumented species. Yeah, right! she thought. What other species has the ability to produce raw energy?

"Damnit!" She said to herself out loud. "I told them! I told them that it was too risky!!"

Samus knew about the biogenerators that the scientists were developing. The original DNA had been broken down to the point where only the energy producing organs developed, but with extensive reverse engineering, it could be possible to derive a functioning organism, and she was sure that's what the hijackers were after.

She was afraid to say "Space Pirates," but it was more than likely that they were behind the operation.

· · ·

Suddenly, Samus' censors went wild. A craft was approaching from above. That's some stealth technology they've got, Samus thought to herself sarcastically. She used her strafing thrusters to nudge her ship behind a drifting asteroid and immediately cloaked.

Seconds later, the ship passed by, uncloaked and severely damaged. She was just about to move on it when a plasma shot ripped into it's unshielded hull from behind. She checked her proximity censors and detected two Epsilon class battle runners approaching at mach 4.

"Damn pirates!" Samus gritted and decloaked her craft.

The first ship passed by and Samus moved out, quickly disabling it with an electromagnetic contact mine. The second craft had detected her and propelled itself into a defensive come around, illuminating her shield with a shower of plasma shots. After realizing that energy based projectile warfare would lead only to a stale mate, she decided to try something new that she had picked up on Kufa 4… shield penetrators.

Flipping up a small red switch cover on her control panel, Samus fired the first volley. A small rocket shot from the ship’s missile tube and made it’s way toward the enemy ship. Once it reached the craft’s shield a small red glow was emitted as the missile burrowed it’s way past the energy barrier and into it’s hull. Another blast and the ship exploded, a perfect sphere of fire, contained by it’s own shield until the generators themselves were consumed, leaving only a small cloud of debris and frozen gas.

That seemed to work, but she didn’t expect to be so lucky against a highly armored ship such as the stolen Ragnarok. Her censors detected that the fleeing craft had been severely compromised and the warp core was going critical. She decided to warn the passenger. "Calling unidentified pilot, your ship is going to self destruct, you must abort immediately." Seconds later, a small escape pod broke away from the ship seemingly propelled by the ensuing explosion. It drifted slowly towards Samus’ ship, and she approached with caution as she had once been tricked into rescuing an escape pod that turned out to be a bomb. She ended up having to abort her warp core and drifted through space on impulse thrusters until a mining vessel picked her up two weeks later.

"Verifying contact with jettisoned pod. State your status and intent."

After a brief struggle with static, a voice manifested its self on the com speaker.

"…Please help… mission compromised… Ragnarok … escaped…"

She immediately docked with the escape pod. It seemed that someone had already seen the Ragnarok, and it wasn’t pretty.

Chapter 004
Strange Company continued... by nameless

Curin Nesmouth was not quite aware that he was being rescued by Samus Aran, possibly the greatest known bounty hunter of all time. All he could think of was the strange events which he had witnessed.

Curin was a big man, larger than Samus with her suit on. As most bounty hunters in that era, he did not wear a servo suit like Samus'. His was more of a polytherm that was strapped onto the body and worn... not driven. Very few bounty hunters chose or had access to servo suits. Servo technology was passed over decades ago when most of their stockpile was destroyed on their planet of origin. After that, no one really cared or had the necessary funds to duplicate it.

Samus examined the gauges to make sure that a reliable seal was established before breaking the air lock. She allowed the door to open and fold away. The air from the two crafts, after being brought from two different worlds on two different sides of the galaxy, breathed by two different people, was finally allowed to mix due to an event that would have otherwise kept it separate for eternity.

"Leave your weapon." Samus said staring in a slight upward angle at the looming hulk of a man. Curin slowly lifted the strap of his Zeus 45 plasma rifle and placed it gently in a locker just outside the door. He retained a small sonic pistol which was strapped on his hip just underneath his armor. Samus knew it was there, but she allowed him that liberty, after all, he was a bounty hunter, and a bounty hunter trusts no one.

His gear rattled as he stepped onto Samus' vessel. He sported no high tech gadgetry, no special instruments. She admired him for that. He was a humble mercenary who got his job done. Yes, she remembered Curin, he had been around much longer than she had. It was his name that Samus had come to know and to model her aspirations after. She knew him the second he stepped onto the ship, and although the two had never met, she was sure he knew her.

"Samus Aran," Curin said at length, "we meet at last..."

"Better on my ship than yours, Curin Nesmouth, as I'm sure someone has a bounty out on my head." They both laughed at that, all too aware of the complete truth of the statement.

"What brings you to this lonely part of the galaxy, Mrs. Aran?" Curin teased, knowing full well what the answer would be.

"Same thing as you, I'm sure, Mr. Nesmouth." After a while she added, "I think you and I are the only ones crazy enough to go for this bounty... and it seems now that we both underestimated it's difficulty."

"Yes, but how have YOU underestimated it?"

"Well, I'm here rescuing you instead of towing the cargo back to federation command."

Curin produced a mild smirk, he could imagine Samus' displeasure in missing a bounty on her first try, as was almost never the case.

"Harder than Corias Downs?"

"Downs, what a schmuck, I hope he got whatever he deserved. Bastard took me two years to drag in... How'd you know about him anyway?"

"Same way every other hunter in this galaxy knew about him. No one was really very happy that you finally got him... We would have all liked to have a share of that bounty."

"Bought me two houses on Corbin 12" Samus mocked.

"Yeah, well hopefully this one will buy me a new ship..."

"That is, if you get it..."

"Come on, Samus, you know I'm invaluable to you. I know much more than you, I'm sure. After all, YOU have never worked for the Pirates before, I have."

"Tell me what you know, you dirty slime ball."

He smiled.

"They have agents among the federation, and I know exactly who they are. We could get an extra 25 thousand each if we brought all of them in. What do you say?"

"I knew it!!! There would've been no way that they would've found out about the recovered DNA if they didn't have spies.

"They never thought to go back to SR-388, besides if they had, there would've been nothing left; the decon team picked the whole place clean."

"Yeah, well, the federation ordered no samples to be taken, whatever happened to that?"

"A ruse? I don't know, all I know as that they got some of it. Thing is, Samus, they never could get it to work. You can't clone Metroid DNA, they proved that on Ceres. They had to synthesize what they got using retro-bacteria."

"Yeah, well, all I know is that they got some of it to work, and that means that they can get all of it."

"That's not what the pirates have in mind. You should know better than anyone that that plan failed twice already. No, they have something bigger in store."

"A weapon?"

"A bomb."

"A bomb?"

"Yes, with that little generator that's on board Ragnarok, they can concentrate an infinitely large amount of energy on an infinitely small point in space causing a blast capable of vaporizing all of federation territory in a tenth of a millisecond. It's big."

"God. Aren't there some sort of laws against experiments like these? Shouldn't there be some kind of law?"

"Men never knew, Samus, they never knew."

Chapter 005
A Guest in the House by CapCom

Samus was silent for a moment, letting Curin’s words set in. Concentrate an infinite amount of energy at an infinitely small point in space... Men never knew... She had remembered theories regarding what would happen if such an event occurred, most of them proposed in the late years of the life of the great theoretician, Welsh Cobreen’s life. Cobreen had used data from other experiments in the first half of Earth’s 21st Century which had been used to develop a theory as to how the universe had been formed. Hawking revised this idea by examining black holes and quasars. By concentrating an infinite amount of mass in one location, a hole in the universe would form, opening up wormholes and portals to other universes, forming a black hole. Quasars, huge clusters of stars that had existed in the early billions of years after the creation of the galaxy and lay near its heart, could produce vast amounts of energy in one small place, probably because they held a massive black hole at their center.

Cobreen theorized that the gravitational pull of a gigantic black hole would pull everything-mass and energy-towards it. Normally, this matter would be shot out through the singularity or into another universe, but if enough energy and matter could be concentrated onto one spot at one particular time, the resulting chain of events would result in a massive explosion similar to the one that supposedly formed the universe.

Cobreen stated that this could be duplicated if enough matter and energy were to be concentrated on one spot, as what happens in dying stars. In the case of a star, however, the star has already spent its energy and explodes due to a massive compaction of matter. If enough energy could be applied to the supernova, say by opening a singularity in the center of a star, the resulting blast would be equivalent to a miniature Big Bang.

Samus had heard of scientists testing such a thing in the early years of the 21st Century of the Galaxy, but these reports had never been confirmed. Perhaps they had finally figured out how to do such a thing using the Metroid...

She looked up at Curin. “No, it wouldn’t wipe out just the Federation. It would annihilate the entire galaxy or even the universe!”

“Ah. So I guess this means you get to save the universe once again, eh Samus?” Curin mocked. “Only this time you’ll need help.”

“And what do you mean by that, Mr. Nesmouth?” she replied, knowing all too well what the answer was.

“This job is too big for you. Oh, I tracked down the Ragnarok, but she’s not what you think she is. I was lucky to find her, let alone escape. I had to convert every ounce of power to the warp drive just to pull back in time. You’ll be cut down in a matter of seconds.”

“We’ll see about that. Only one question...where did the Pirates come from?”

“On my way out, those pirates followed me. They must have been part of an advance scouting unit. Must not want anyone to know where the Ragnarok is.”

“That brings me to a point...where is the Ragnarok?”

“Yes, Samus. That does seem to be what everyone is asking, doesn’t it? I know how to find her. On top of that, it looks like I will be staying here for the time being, since my ship is destroyed.”

“No, it’s not. Samus motioned towards the disabled Space Pirate ship. Something tells me you’ll be needing this.”

“Don’t you mean ‘we’ll be needing this,’ Samus?”

Samus smiled.

Chapter 006
Information is the key by Andy

"Well, will you look at this!"

Kris sighed and swiveled her chair away from her screen. "Don't tell me… you've found another illegal porn node while you're supposed to be working."

Chris laughed gleefully and winked at his partner. "Not this time unfortunately. Come on, take a look. I'm sure you'll be interested."

"Very well." Kris got up from her chair and walked over to Chris's station, looking over his shoulder. "Heh, I thought you hated people looking over your shoulder." She poked him. "Huh? Huh? Thought you hated it?"

He ignored her and the tongue she stuck out at him and instead pulled up a database on his screen. He typed a few commands and a graph appeared. "Now, you remember a few months ago I was poking around? I found that the Federation was buying lots of armor and chassis grade metals; weapon supplies and things like that."

"Oh God," Kris said, "You haven't been hacking into the military databases again, have you?"

He chuckled and swiveled around to face Kris. "Now you," he said, pointing at her, "did not hear that from me."

"Ha! Like I'd ever tell anyone if they asked me. Now, come on, what were you going to show me?"

"Ok, ok, well an influx of materials like that wasn't unusual then because it was just after that huge defeat at the Ricos Asteroid Field." He turned back to his screen and pointed at the graph. "However, look at these figures. No craft on the books uses some of these materials! Just a second…" He clicked a few times, filtering out all the regular items. He pointed again. "The tensile strengths of some of these metals are so far above anything used in other ships it's incredible!"

"So what does this all mean? And.." Kris thought for a minute. "I thought the request for funding was denied by the Congress."

"Just bear with me." Chris closed the graph and brought up a timeline. "Ok, I cross-referenced the dates of the purchases of materials with other events and came up with this. Apparently, after they were denied their funding, military officials arranged some sort of deal with Mushiyhara. I'm sure you've heard of them."

"Well, who hasn't?"

"Exactly, but how many people have heard of a new spaceship being made? That's right, nobody in the general population. Anyway, just on a hunch I went back and checked the military's shipping records, which you did not hear from me either! Well, lo and behold, those new parts and materials were shipped to destination: Classified. Now, I didn't want to set off any alarms so I didn't find out exactly where this was, but I'll bet you anything that that means 'Top Secret Military Base'."

"So the military is building a new craft. Well, I'm assuming you have something in mind?"

"Exactly!" Chris replied, grinning. "But, they are not building it, it's already built. And, there's bad news…"

“Don't tell me… it's already been hijacked." Kris said.

"One step ahead of me, just like always."

"Ok, well let me think." Kris went back to her station and checked her calendar.

"Hey, I'll dump all the info I got for you. Made a real nice summary too." Chris chuckled. "Thought you'd probably want to get up to speed pretty quickly."

Kris looked back over and said, "Well, I'm assuming GFed has already dispatched bounty hunters to find the ship…" She scanned the document Chris had sent her. "Umm.. the Ragnarok?"

"Yeah that's it. Huge amounts of weaponry on it. Could wipe out and entire planet in a few hours; stuff like that."

"Hmm I see." She looked back at her calendar. "Well Chris, if you'll remember, we have that state dinner with some Federation officials tomorrow night. Some new ambassador being welcomed from one of the outer planets or something. Anyway, it just so happens that a few of the high ranking officers in the military are going to be there. Might be a good chance to glean some more information?" She looked over at Chris who was furiously typing at his station.

"Wha, what?" He looked over at her. "Oh, yeah! The dinner! Thanks, I almost forgot. Good job on that by they way. Was it that minister guy.." He looked back at his screen. "Just doing some more digging here…" he trailed off and continued typing.

Kris smiled at her partner and shook her head. "I've always told you it pays to have friends in high places. Hey, I'm going out to get some lunch. You want anything special?" She walked towards the door and when he didn't answer she laughed and called back, "Fine then! I'll get the usual."

As she shut the door Chris looked up confused. "Huh? The usual? Oh yeah that's fine," he mumbled to himself.

Chapter 007
A visit to the neighbor's by nameless

In a remote sector of the Galaxy an event was about to happen that would destroy a world. It would wipe out 250 thousand species and displace some 6 billion intelligent peoples. The sun of a small planetary system named Talese was about to go nova.

Solar flare activity that stretched to the outer planets had been on a steep incline and over the last century the sun had turned from a brilliant yellow to a dull orange. The red giant stage was already in progress and the sun would increase in size by almost 400%. It had spent the last of it's fuel and was about to take one last breath before ending in a cosmic disaster which would turn the eyes of an entire galaxy.

Most of the inhabitants had already fled and it seemed that the only stragglers were conservationists from worlds that the Talesans had never heard of. Occasionally one might run across a family, a tribe, or a town that refused to leave, refused to let go of something that was so much a part of them that it's destruction would be a death in and of itself.

The last salvage vessel was in the final days of it's stay. It was not a salvage operation, but a highly funded effort to save the abundant species of flora and fauna that resided on Telese. The vessel, one of the largest ever built, was known merely as "Ark" after an old Earth tale.

And so it was that those who cared stayed, those who didn't left, and those who were stubborn enough to believe that they could preserve a world that was marked for complete and ultimate death, came to take it with them.

It is doubtless that Samus Aran had paid much attention to the media coverage of this impending disaster which was mere weeks away. She had more important things to worry about.

· · ·

Samus' ship moved cautiously towards the disabled scout vessel. The electromagnetic mine had temporarily fried all of it's circuits and instruments but a bounty hunter can never be too sure. In the mean time, Samus fidgeted with her suit. She managed to re-route mechanical power from her primary leg servos to the broken knee mechanism. The action was unnatural at worst but it wouldn't impair her agility.

"As soon as I catch this bounty, I'm getting myself a new suit!" Samus mumbled as she tightened the last rivet under the access plate.

"Relax." Curin commiserated, "look at what I have to deal with." He pounded on his polytherm chest plate which was more pockmarked from laser fire than the crater ridden surface of SR-388.

Shortly thereafter, the ship docked with the scout vessel and the vacuum motors of the docking chamber could be heard struggling to maintain a seal.

"Let's blow the doors." Samus said, attaching a small packet to the pirate vessel's locking mechanism. She then placed a small metal box over the explosives and riveted it to the door with what looked like a nail gun on steroids. She pressed a button on the box, stepped away, and after a short delay a very loud pop was heard and the door slowly drifted ajar.

"We're in." She said, firing up a lighting torch.

"They'll probably be hiding near the bridge." Curin guessed. "Careful, they can see in the dark."

"I know," She said, remembering a time when she had been attacked by a hundred angry Ki Fighters in the dark caverns of the fortress Zeebes.

Chapter 008
All too easy... by CapCom

The flare cast an eerie blue light in the corridors of the fighter, exhaust tubes looking like ice crystals dripping with slime. It cast shadows on the wall, and Samus was forced to change her light filtration settings; not that she was one to try and shoot at shadows, it was just too unnerving. With a shiver, she thought of how much it reminded her of the ice caverns on Kolos IX, not a very pleasant - and warm - memory.

Samus knew the craft’s layout by heart; she had certainly boarded enough of them in the past to know how to effectively get inside and neutralize them. On top of that, she had captured one of their craft once in a mission previous to her first trip to Zebes. It was not surprising that the craft design hadn’t changed at all.

Apparently, the main corridor started in the ship’s small cargo bay, holding ration supplies and some weapons as well as other material; nothing of value, nothing of danger, and led into the ship, past two crew quarters, and then ended. From there, the path took a 90 degree angle, ending in a doorway several paces down. That would lead to the bathroom.

“I can see that the ‘no vacancy’ sign isn’t up, he he,” Curin said, motioning towards the door with his rifle.

“Very funny. Always heard about your famous ‘sense of humor.’ Never thought I’d get to experience it firsthand.”

“You’ll have plenty more chances after this, Samus.”

Samus turned to face the wall. There was a ladder hanging down and a hatch above that would lead her to the bridge of the fighter craft. It looked sealed from the inside, and she didn’t feel like forcing it...not at this moment anyway. “Could you hand me The Plug?” she said, looking down at Curin, the larger bounty hunter covering her with his blaster rifle.

“Sure thing.” He pulled out a pale blue canister from his utility belt and handed it up to his red Power-Suited associate, who grabbed it and stretched her arm up towards the hatch.

The Plug was a special device used by GFed boarding parties to neutralize the crew of a spacecraft and allow for an easier hijacking, so named because that was basically what it was: a plug. It sealed itself to the desired surface and fired out a small drill that soundlessly bored through most metals, then ejected its contents into the other side of the target. Those contents would be Hypo-Althetamine gas, a substance similar to tear gas, that attacked the eyes and sinus of most animals, causing them to cough violently and temporarily blinding them. Unconsciousness soon followed.

Samus pushed The Plug up to the side of the hatch and pressed a button on the side of the canister. It vibrated for a second, then emitted a small hiss. She thought she heard a couple of thumps from the other side of the hatch. Samus quickly looked down to see that Curin had already put on his breath mask and was ready. Taking a deep breath, she jumped and punched upward, the force of the impact bending the hatch inward and sending it flying into the ship’s bridge where it clanged as it bounced around. With the rest of her momentum, Samus was carried into the room where she quickly took an attack position and scanned the room for any Pirates that may have had breath masks on. There were none to be seen.

By now, Curin had made his way onto the bridge and was squinting through the pale green gas that filled the room. “Doesn’t look like anything’s alive...” he said through the external speakers. He lowered his gun and prodded a couple of Zebesians sprawled on the floor of the bridge. “That was all too easy. You sure about this, Samus?”

She nodded slowly, still in attack position and scanning the walls, floor, and ceiling.

Curin rolled one of the bodies over with the tip of his blaster rifle. He was surprised to see that it didn’t look like a traditional Space Pirate should look. Instead of having a bright carapace, this Zebesian’s exoskeleton was a dull blue-white. Where the face and chest had been was crumpled outward, as if something had burst its way out from the inside. It didn’t take another instant to realize that this was an empty shell, an exoskeleton. That was funny...in all the years he had tracked and hunted Space Pirates, he had never before seen one of them molt. It just didn’t seem to fit their metabolism.

“Then again...” Curin raised his rifle quickly and pointed it at the ceiling, finger itching the trigger, just in time to see the whole big, black world fall on top of him.

Chapter 009
Easier Said Than Done by nameless

The blow knocked him flat on his back where he felt something grab him and lift his 300 pound body into the air. Soon he felt himself flying through the air and then slamming into something that was just as solid and unpleasant as the darkness that surrounded him. He picked himself up and blindly fired his blaster into the darkness. Just as he pulled the trigger, he felt a large bulky limb knock the laser rifle out of his hand where it spun off into nothingness, spraying spirals of plasma in all directions. Where was Samus' lighting torch? And more importantly, where was Samus?! He couldn't worry about that now though, all he could do at the moment was defend himself.

Curin instinctively reached for his belt and grabbed the first weapon he could find. It was a razor dagger that he picked up on Chefron not a month before. It was laser sharpened making it only a few atoms thick at the edge and it was declared by several of the galaxy's best weapons makers to be the sharpest object ever made by man. He struck out at an imaginary target and he felt as if the blade would cleave the very darkness itself. Again he slashed into nothingness, but this time, although he didn't feel the blade strike anything, he heard a wild scream and a thump that sounded like a severed limb clattering to the floor. Curin hesitated a moment too long before lashing out again, because, just as he drew the dagger back he felt a sharp serrated edge rip across his forearm, causing him to drop the dagger in pain. It clattered to the floor and Curin knew that it was ruined. It was no longer the sharpest blade made by man. He attempted to roll back in a defensive retreat but as he did, he fell right into the grip of his enemy. There must’ve been more than one. He felt a sharp appendage reach up across his chest and an immense pressure in his back. Then it spoke. Not in English, but a language he could understand.

"Move, and I remove your spine." It hissed.

· · ·

"Damnit!" Samus grumbled, "Curin, my fuel line has been cut, I can’t get any power to the torch. You’re gonna have to fire up a flare."

Samus waited a second, expecting an answer. None came.

"Curin?"

Still no answer.

"Curin, what’s going on?"

Just then, she heard something move through the shadows, and her motion sensors picked up two avatars.

Shit, she thought, they were resistant to the gas bombs!

She checked her chronometer and got an estimation of how long it would be until the ship’s emergency power systems came back on line.

7:59:04

She would have to survive for eight minutes in a cold dark ship, seen but unable to see, surrounded by some of the most deadly and best trained alien warriors in the galaxy. This mission was turning out to be a little more difficult than she had anticipated, but only a little...

Chapter 010
8 minutes, in the reek of death by Shabadage

Samus cursed under her breath, if this ship was full of pirates, she be in a lot of trouble. Samus quickly made the decision to find Curin. He was probably on the bridge, that's where they were supposed to go originally. Samus started for the bridge.

· · ·

Curin could hear sounds of movement, but was afraid to move, he could already feel the claw of his pirate friend digging into the flesh of his back. Curin grimaced as the pirate re-adjusted his grip, and brushed a nerve ending.

· · ·

Samus entered the bridge, which was completely dark except for some faint light emanating from her suit. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a faint gleaming, and in that gleaming, she saw an eye, a pirates eye. She started to move again, as if she had seen nothing, and then let a single shot loose. At just that instant the lights kicked on, Samus had taken her time to get to the bridge. The pirate had no time to react as the light's turning on startled it. There was a sickening pop as the beam collided with the pirates eye, burrowing into it's head, vaporizing the brain, and detonating the skull. She heard Curin scream, and for a split second, thought she had hit him as well. As Curin dropped to the ground, she saw a chunk missing from his burly back, and blood slowly spreading in a pool on the ground.

Chapter 011
EES and EMM by CapCom

There are billions of stars in every galaxy, and at least as many galaxies as there are stars in one. Galaxies cluster together under the force of gravity and spatial attraction, and star systems cluster together in corners of each one. Upon last count, there were upwards of five billion star systems in the Galaxy, and a fairly good percentage of these held planetary bodies, dancing about in an interstellar ballet of untold proportions, each movement lasting a millennia. Many of these planets had the capabilities of supporting life, in whatever form they might take. There were even some interstellar bodies such as asteroids and gas clouds that had reportedly furnished an even wider variety of life forms.

But with all of the several thousand species of intelligent life forms discovered by the Galactic Federation, and the number of planetary systems, it became known that, on average, one star would go nova in explored space once in approximately every six years. Many of these novas would go unnoticed by the majority of sentient life forms (unless, of course, they were within the blast zone of the dying sun or would be affected by its death throes) and supernovas would usually appear hidden somewhere in the depths of the current events of the Interstellar News Bulletin. Some news would broadcasts would be different depending on the star system opened on the interstellar net, but above all, nobody really cared about them due to the lightspeed factor. They would simply catch the lightwave in another thousand years or so.

This did not, however, mean that GFed wasn't interested in every nova that occurred. They had created a separate department of the Federation just for the purpose of relocating life forms who would otherwise become extinct when their sun went nova. A series of Cradle-class ships, the flagship of the fleet being known simply as Ark were deployed to assist in evacuation maneuvers. They would move samples of all life forms off of planets in a supernova's radius and take them to a new world to create a new Eden for their planet. These craft became known as 'Emergency Evacuation Systems,' or EES, and their crews had nothing better to do than locate new planets which could be terraformed and relocate all life forms from dying planets to a new homeworld.

So, though the vast majority of the Galaxy cared little over the fate of each star system other than their own, members of the EES were charged with the safekeeping of life forms from those planets (and with the exploration of new systems under the danger of going nova). By this time, the Ark had reached one such dying system and EES teams were busily transporting genetic material and life forms to the Cradle. The Ark's captain, Car'arano Voletia, was busily watching the endless stream of vessels docking with and unloading their cargo on his craft. He had no concerns over renegade spacecraft, or the events that were forming in another, relatively quiet sector of the Galaxy, events that would have a rather profound impact on his mission.

· · ·

Curin lay sprawled on the ground, screaming and convulsing as the pile of blood - his blood - slowly pooled away from him and dripped through the corrugated floor panels surrounding him. All he could think about was the pain, not the missing chunk of flesh from his back, or the twitching form of the vaporized monster - or the fact that there was another one of those things somewhere in the ship - just the constant, mind-numbing pain at his lower spine.

Samus ran over to his position, and gasped when she saw the full extent of the damage - apparently, when she had fried the Zebesian, it had ripped its arm out of Curin's back. It still gripped part of him in its deathgrasp. She resisted the urge to vomit and instead turned her attentions back to Curin and immediately began a series of emergency medical operations.

The man was still screaming, and she aimed at the ceiling and fired, then grabbed a piece of metal - making sure it was cold - and placed it in his mouth as a gag. Next, she put her hand over the hole in his back and activated a small system on it. A small resin coating quickly covered the hole, a remodification of her suit's emergency repair system. It didn't heal him, but it would stop the bloodflow - for now. She would have to put him in the medical capsule back on her Starship until he was well enough to be moved. Hopefully, that wouldn't take as long as she feared it would. Next, she took his arms and started pulling him back towards her ship, warily scanning the room for the second Pirate. It was only then that she took another look at the still-twitching form of charred alien that lay steaming on the floor in a pile of its own body fluids that she realized that she had been shooting at something completely different.

Chapter 012
Two Hackers and a Senator by nameless

The State Dinner kicked off with the introduction of the Federation's seven hundredth planetary ambassador. Senator Ruple of the planet Earth led the inauguration. He was a collected man with a clear mind and a steady voice. His public decorum was impeccable and he carried only a slight temper problem that only his wife knew about.

As, Senator Ruple completed the final discourse of the ceremony, two individuals entered through the back door. They were obviously emissaries or public relations employees who had been sent from some obscure faction of the federation to report on the inauguration. They took seats at the same table that the senator himself was sitting.

As the banquette kicked off, the senator approached the two emissaries, facetiously inquiring if they liked his speech. The first apologized that they had been late.

"Please accept my most sincere apologies, Mr. Senator, our jump was over 20 minutes late due to a migrating asteroid field. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Envoy Rudolf Christofson, and this is my colleague Pamela Keen."

"I don’t believe we have had the pleasure of meeting, Mr. Christofson." The senator replied, accepting the apology and the introduction.

"Oh, no, I’m afraid we haven’t. We come from the Flagella system. I’m sure you’ve heard of it."

"Flagella? But…"

"Yes, I know," Rudolf replied, "there is no return space port, which is why we have come here today. We wish to propose the construction of a new port from within federation space."

"Well, that is quite a bit to ask, especially at a formal state dinner. We have been out of contact with Flagella for quite some time, and it may be difficult to negotiate passport licensing, not to mention funding for the port itself."

"Ah, yes. Funding is what we have come here to discuss, Senator. May we have a word in a more private area?"

They headed for a private meeting room just down the hall from the banquette lobby. The senator took one last look at his Pastrafa De Lafata before ingesting an entirely new entrée.

"We are wondering," Mr. Christofson continued after the three had become situated, "what it would cost to acquire funding for these materials." He handed a computer printout to the senator.

After a brief glance, the senator looked up at the man from Flagella. "Is this some sort of joke?" The senator demanded. These are the exact specs for the…"

"…The Ragnorock?" Chris finished the sentence that the senator could not say.

The senator reached for an intercom with the full intent of calling security.

"Now, senator, there’s no need for that." Kris said. "After all, who is the one who approved the last minute addition of an on-ship space port. Those types of specs are unheard of on a star cruiser, not to mention potentially catastrophic."

"How do you know so much? Who have you been talking to?"

"Let’s just say we intercepted a little piece of unsecured text from your personal databases. You really should be more careful senator." Kris mocked.

"Fact is senator, you’re in deep," Chris added, "and we’re the ones who are gonna get you out. Isn’t blackmail wonderful? You help us, we help you. We’ll return the encryption sequence and all relevant information, and you tell us everything you know about the whereabouts of Ragnorock. Deal?"

"How do I know you’ll destroy the data?"

"I assure you, no one will ever be able to trace you, senator. I may be dirty, but I’m honest. Now, let’s play a game. You give me three names, we give you three discs." He said, holding up three small shiny storage discs.

The senator contemplated his situation for a brief moment. In three minutes he had changed from a financially secure state employee to a dirty senator whose life was in the hands of a couple of black market hackers.

"Very well," he said, realizing a good deal when he saw one.

· · ·

Chapter 013
Two Hunters and a Rogue by CapCom

Samus was no xenobiologist, but she knew the difference between a Zebesian and every other form of life. They ranged in colors of red and green and blue. They had bodies that were a cross between an insect and a crustacean; their sticky forearms allowing them to climb on walls while also being able to slice through their enemies with pincer-like claws. She hadn't heard any instances of Zebesians molting, but there was no way that they would be able to molt their entire body away and survive.

So the charred, rancid mass of dying flesh that lay before her on the deck was not a Zebesian. The creature was black - not just black from carbon film and laser burns, but its carapace was a dull brownish-black color. It's main body had several appendages hanging off of it, and a nasty set of pincers on its back. It's head and neck contorted off of the abdomen, then twisted forward to form a face that seemed more insectoid than anything else. She couldn't see what had happened to the front half of the body, but assumed it lay in the pile of charred flesh, blood, and slag that the creature lay in.

Samus had seen - and hunted - dozens of different species, but there wasn't much that could bother her in a new organism. But there were two things about this creature that greatly disturbed her. First, it's eyes, four on each side of the head, like black marbles, cold as ice and still holding a steely gaze even in the creature's death throes. The other one was the large mass of clear bluish gel that lay around the creature and seeming to seep out of small holes on its back.

She didn't know what to make of it, but what scared her the most was what it reminded her of. Only one creature she had seen before reminded her of this, and all of its kind were dead, and she had no qualms about that. What this creature reminded her of was a Metroid. The thought left her with a deep, sinking feeling inside her stomach.

Samus checked her clock.

0:05:48

Little over five minutes until the Space Pirate vessel's engines would come back on-line. If she was gonna follow through with her plan, she'd have to work fast.

She grabbed the now unconscious Curin onto her shoulder and clambered down the hatch to the lower deck of the ship. She was going to have to drag the other hunter back to her ship and put him in a recovery capsule and then find the other one of those creatures and kill it before it could do any damage to the ship. She knew it wouldn't try anything as long as the two ships were connected -

Oh, SHIT!

Samus ran down the corridor to the spacecraft's umbilical cord that connected her ship with the Space Pirate vessel, the weight of Curin not slowing her down one bit. She knew that the rogue creature would try to disconnect the two ships, probably without closing the hatch to either one of the vessels, then hijack the other one and report back to wherever it worked. That would mean whoever was on one ship would be sucked out into space.

She opened up a file in her helmet's computer and tongued in a few commands. That should keep the two ends of the umbilical cord attached to both ships, regardless if anyone tried to close it. The only way it could be opened was if someone overrode the system, and only she knew the codes to do that. The only thing she was worried about was whether or not the rogue could survive in space or if it was suicidal. Neither of those would be good for Curin, but she had at least two hours' worth of oxygen and atmosphere stored inside her suit, plenty of time to figure something out.

But Curin didn't have that luxury.

Samus turned the corner, and was relieved to see that the umbilicus was still attached. There wasn't anything trying to blow the airlock or disconnect the tether. She bounded across the span between the two spacecraft and closed both ends of the tether behind her. She opened the door to the ship's bridge and walked to the right side of the room to a smaller chamber where she kept her medical equipment. She opened the regeneration capsule and placed Curin inside, propping him up in the tight confines of the pod. She closed it, activated it. There was a whoosh as liquid oxygen filled the capsule, and the pod went to work.

She quickly checked the room with her high-powered bio-scanner and when she was satisfied nothing else was in there, she closed a second capsule around the regeneration pod as a precautionary measure and then sealed the room.

Then, she checked her chronometer:

0:03:57

Little more than four minutes to find the rogue creature and neutralize it before the Space Pirate ship went back on-line. The last thing she needed was her newly acquired spacecraft to be recaptured.

Switching her gun arm to a higher frequency, she began the hunt.

Chapter 014
What's Hiding in the Shadows by Shabadage

Samus cursed under her breath, there were less than 2 minutes left until the engines came back on. She quickly decided that the ship had to be deserted, otherwise she would have been attacked by now. Samus shook her head and headed for the engine room.

· · ·

"Engine Status: Ready" the panel read, "Start Fusion Engine?"

Samus hit the accept key, and as she did, she saw that an access tube in the floor, that lead to the engine, was open, and there was a jet black, glossy head, looking at her. No sooner did she notice the head than it disappeared, and one thought ran through Samus' head.

"It's going to detonate the engine."

· · ·

Samus ran, her legs pumping like pistons, she reached her ship and slapped the airlock button. She was about to retract the umbilical cord, but instead ran to the pilot's chair. Samus punched the throttle to full, and there was a distinct groaning heard around the ship, and the umbilical cord was torn away.

Samus was thrown from the seat as shockwaves buffeted the small ship, When the violent waves subsided, Samus sat up on the deck of the pilot's chamber. Samus felt like shooting something.

"How the hell am I going to use the pirate's ship now. I have no chance of finding that fuc....", there was a faint shimmering in the ship's viewscreen, and the Ragnarok de-cloaked, all visible weapons ports trained at Samus's ship.

Chapter 015
Escape... by FN

"fuck," was all that could be heard inside the ship. Samus was pissed. She had been caught completely off guard, and that creature was obviously in cahoots with the pirates who hijacked the ship.

Samus had a back-up plan. It was risky, and could send her to her grave, but it was her only shot against such a powerful vessel. She ran to the healing pod, and saw Curin begin to regain consciousness. He was 96% healed. It would have to do. She pulled him out of the pod, and got out his armor.

"Curin, we got trouble," She said as she hurriedly pulled him up. "Looks as if we have to abandon ship. We'll get you a servo suit aboard the Ragnarok. But, we only have a few minutes."

Curin, still in a daze, mumbled "Okay, let's go."

Suddenly, a computerized voice was heard over the ship's comm. "Unidentified ship. Drop your shields and prepare for a tractor into the vessel. You have five minutes to comply. Have a nice day."

"Just like the programmers at the federation," she mumbled, incoherently, as she slid Curin into a stealth escape pod.

She was ready for her backup plan. She powered up the thrusters, and activated her favorite new toy. A damaril device. She acquired it on Uranil Quat 4. A mining colony with some skilled inventors.

The little sucker used hyper bubbles in order to present hundreds of realistic sensor echoes. Since they are hyper, and all sensors use hyper technology, no existing sensor could tell an echo from the real thing.

Activating the device, she powered the thrusters, and laughed at how shocked the little assholes would be when they found 300 of her ships. Sadly, she could only pull this off for 2.657 minutes, before the bubbles collapsed. But it could be done from any distance, since they were just hyper bubbles.

Giving her ship the order to Hyper Jump to Zela port 30 seconds after she was off, she jumped into the pod.

She activated the stealth device and hoped that the pirates would be too busy with 300 Bounty hunter ships to notice her little pod. A pod that would be entering a small, out of the way docking port.

She hoped.

Chapter 016
Docking Procedures by CapCom

Samus uploaded her ship’s memory banks with all files regarding the Raganrok, including some tech specs she’d managed to wrestle away from Federation security before she took the mission. There was a risk of being tracked while hacking into Federation databanks because of their high-profile security systems, but Samus was good, and used self-destructing links to the Stellar Net to get her information. The links were a tad pricey, but she needed them in order to keep from being tracked through space.

One of those uploaded files was a map of the ship.

Samus waited until she had the system ready to go and punched the Damaril device’s controls. All around her, three hundred copies of her ship appeared, materializing out of nowhere. Less than a second later, she ejected her escape pod, coasting it into position using nav boosters, being careful to make a beeline for the docking port that wouldn’t take her through any of the holograms. Her real ship disappeared into Hyperspace right before the three hundred simulants started firing seemingly deadly lasers at the Ragnarok, but not before her craft launched a small sentry drone with a small sensor-scrambling device. Cheap and efficient, the drone would target the Raganarok’s sensor grid and keep firing at it. The Ragnarok would think that she was being shot at by hundreds of ships, then realize that there was only one craft out there that was shooting at it and try to hit each and every one. That was part of the ploy, to distract the ship’s gunners while she directed the escape pod to the docking port.

But this was where the beauty came in: each of the small Hunter ships was programmed to react to laser fire accordingly. If one was hit, it would make a holograph of a shield being hit, even though the laser passed right through the projection. Because of the ship’s number of guns, it would take them several seconds to realize that there was nothing there and their shots weren’t hitting any of the ships and would start looking for the sentry gun. Then again, seconds would be all that she needed.

Then again, a LOT can happen in fifteen seconds.

Chapter 017
Docking Procedures (cont) by nameless

The escape pod locked onto the docking port's guidance frequency and began to approach the vessel. Samus continuously checked her helmet's sensor grid to monitor the activity of the Ragnarok. At first it appeared to be working. The decoy ships began to pelt the mighty vessel with false fire and the Ragnarok seemed to react accordingly attempting to blast each ship with it's deadly plasma cannons. Samus' pod approached the docking bay.

Two hundred meters until auto lock in, the computer noted.

Samus observed the small flashes on her sensor grid, pleased that her plan had worked. Within seconds, the Ragnarok would be unknowingly pulling it's worst enemy on board, a trojan horse to end it's fell reign.

Just then, the Ragnarok ceased fire. Something was not right. Had they caught on that quickly? Then, the Ragnarok launched something from it's solid projectiles bay, probably a probe. Samus watched it's signature cross her sensor array until it disappeared. She looked out of the tiny viewport of the escape pod to see the pod move out amongst the armada of holographic hunter ships and then explode. The explosion was massive, bigger than one of her power bombs. She felt the shock wave pass through her pod and her sensors immediately began to pick up a massive drop in the hyper-space signature.

"Crap!" She said to Curin.

"What happened?"

"They launched a counter defensive. That hyper disruptor that they just detonated is gonna cause all of those bubbles to collapse and not only that, it'll bring my ship out of hyper space if it's still within range."

"What do you mean? It's probably hundreds of thousands of miles away by now."

"No, don't you know that hyper space has no relativity? That means that the damn thing might as well still be right here until it actually reaches Zela! As long as it's hyper signature is still associated with this locale in space, a hyper disruption will bring it straight out of hyper jump."

"How long should it take to reach Zala? Maybe it's already there?"

"It should take it approximately 4.6 minutes, it's only been in jump for less than thirty seconds."

"Damn!"

Just then the hyper bubbles began to collapse as the damaril lost it's relativity and the ships began to fade away one by one. Within a few seconds, all of the ships were gone, all but one.

"There it is," Samus gritted all too aware that she had lost.

And without hesitation, the Ragnarok fired a photo-plasma discharge at her lone ship. A blast that would take it out in one shot.

And she watched as the blast impacted her ship's shields instantly incinerating them and causing the fusion core to detonate. The explosion was brief and when it was over, there was nothing there. Everything, even the shrapnel was disintegrated, transformed into mere molecules to once again become part of the cosmos.

Her heart sank. She had built that ship with her bare hands. It had been with her for fifteen years. It was as if she had watched an old friend parish against that black speckled backdrop of space. And then she forgot about it. Shook her memories away and let it go. Her ship, her nameless ship, was no more.

Curin looked at her, and he understood. It's hard for a hunter to loose his ship. It's as if a part of him goes down with that trusty craft, and then you have to rebuild all over. But he knew that they had to move on. And so did she.

"We've gotta cloak, were naked out here." She detected a weapons lock on her vessel and she immediately toggled the cloaking device. Ragnarok watched as it's laser blast passed through the void, where only milliseconds ago, it's target had once been.

Samus and Curin sat and watched the Ragnarok. Neither of them had seen anything like it. It could handle anything they could throw it's way. It's awkward cigar shape looked as if it were a deadly bullet fired from an unremorseful gun.

Just then, Samus picked up a cloak signal and the Ragnarok vanished. Seconds later it re-appeared nearly a thousand meters closer.

"What's she doing?" Samus mused.

Then the pod was barraged by a series of sub space echoes.

"Looks like she's getting ready for a jump." Curin said, surprised. "Only there's no space port..."

"Shit!" Samus yelled, they've tracked a trajectory. There are two star systems that pass through it. The first one is a system called Talese and the second one is Cynthia Vo. Vo is uninhabited so I'm guessing they're headed for Telese.

"Let's find out and follow them through."

"Are you crazy?" Samus barked, full aware of what a sub-space wake would do to the tiny escape pod. " We can't. This pod can't even hyper for more than 10 minutes let alone make an intergalactic sub-space jump. We're gonna have to get out of range before the wake pulls us into the sub-space singularity. If we get sucked into the wormhole without a destination signiture we could end up in another galaxy or even another universe."

Just then, the rear of Ragnarok opened revealing a massive ring-shaped diaphragm. The ring lowered and began to power up. Curin could feel the hair on his neck begin to stand up as the energy from the engines began to draw electrons from it's surroundings.

The computer warned. Sub-space jump commencing within rang. Please exit area immediately.

"They must have an onboard space port! That's impossible," Samus said.

"How long will it take us to get to Telese using a hyper jump?"

"Telese is out of range for hyper. We'd have to find an amplification port and go subspace. We'll have to hyper jump to Zela or a closer station with a sub-space port and then await a jump to Telese."

"And what about a ship?"

"I think I have something in mind," Samus muttered mysteriously, "That is if I can still find her... That asteroid field has probably migrated thousands of miles since then but it's worth a shot."

"What are you talking about, Samus, is there something you're not telling me?"

"I never thought I'd have to use her, but she'll do good for the kind of travel we're up to."

"Samus!" He was starting to get frustrated. "What are you talking about?"

"Hunter," Samus muttered, and prepared to pull her tiny pod out of range of Ragnarok's jump...

Chapter 018
Escape velocity by CapCom

Samus flipped the safety off of the Hyper Jump button and called up her helmet’s computer display. She’d have to do some spatial mechanics equations and physics formulas on the fly, but her suit was perfectly capable of doing that. She punched in the coordinates for the last known location of the asteroid field, and asked the computer to add a velocity to it. She then started charging up the escape pod’s drive system, preparing to punch in the coordinates at the last possible second.

She stole a glance at the clock:

0:00:07

Just seven seconds before the Ragnarok entered hyperspace.

She couldn’t just jump away as fast as she could; if she jumped too fast, the craft would be torn apart by its own inertia - too slow, and she’d be caught in the wake of the Ragnarok’s jump node and the opposing G-forces would rip the pod to pieces. She couldn’t get sucked into hyperspace; the craft wouldn’t be able to withstand the extreme pressures and turbulent energies of the Node. This was going to be close.

She fired the nav thrusters to the approximate angle of where the asteroid field should be and maneuvered her finger over the jump switch. She didn’t have to wait long for her computer to finish; it was done before she was even halfway there. She punched in the new coordinates, and the fastest velocity she dared to go, then punched the drive button.

There was nothing to do now but cross her fingers and hope for the best.

Beams of blue and green light spiraled in rings around the Ragnarok, highlighting the imperfect sides of the cigar-shaped craft, illuminating dips and bulges on the hull, dull curves and sharp rifts on the impermeable weapon of destruction. Behind her, the spaceport shone like an eerie beacon, emanating waves of power and color as it drew in swallowed energy to power its systems.

It pulsed out quick, intense bursts of energy, vaporizing or dissolving any matter close enough to it, then sucking it all back into the singularity at the center. Light flared through the core of the spaceport, funneling itself around the Ragnarok in a tempest of plasma.

With a final burst, the sleek warship glided into a dimension that wasn’t entirely its own and was gone, the jagged hole in space and time sealing itself behind, and all was still again.

Chapter 019
The Hunter IV by CapCom

Less than ten light years away, a small Hyper Tunnel opened up, releasing its contents through the micro-fissure in space, a small, cloaked escape pod. The invisible cargo sailed out of the hole which collapsed behind it, shimmering out of existence as the craft’s Hyper Engines shut down. Soon, there was nothing left to show that there had ever been anything there.

Onboard the pod, it’s two occupants stared out the forward viewport in earnest. They had successfully escaped the Ragnarok’s singularity and made it to their destination nine light years away from their previous position. They had been lucky that the asteroid field was so close; even another light-year away, and they would have had to hitch a ride on another starship, a risky task seeing as how both the Space Hunters had prices on their heads from various organizations. Now, all they had to do was find Samus’ spare spacecraft before they ran out of extra fuel.

Curin shifted about to take a better look. The pod was cramped for two people, and it only got worse for Curin - he didn’t have a self-cooling suit like Samus and his sweat and body heat quickly made him stuffy. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to sit in here for more than a few more minutes, as long as the asteroid field was in sight. But the burly bounty hunter fell into dismay when he looked out the window. There was nothing there.

“Umm...Samus? Where’s the asteroid field?”

“That’s odd,” the power suit’s artificial voice sounded puzzled and hollow in the cramped spacecraft. “We should be within a few hundred kilometers of the field by now.”

Curin tensed suddenly, wrenching the controls away from Samus and firing the craft’s maneuvering thrusters.

“What the hell are you doing, Curin?!” She raised her arm to bat him away, then almost fell over backwards - had she been in a less-cramped pod, she would have. There was a blur of brownish black and a short rumble as a small asteroid skimmed over the escape pod’s shields and in front of its forward viewport, right where the pod had currently been.. Curin fired maneuvering thrusters again, and brought the craft swinging along a ninety degree arc to face the onrushing swarm, barreling past the larger pieces of space debris.

“Jesus Christ! How the hell did you know THAT was coming?”

Curin grinned, flashing white teeth. “I figured that right now would be the worst time to have jumped right into an asteroid field, so I decided that’s what must have happened. SHIT!”

The craft spun to the side, narrowly avoiding a larger rock.

“Now can I have the controls back? It IS my escape pod, after all”

The other bounty hunter gritted his teeth, frowning. “Alright, Sammer. But take ‘em quick!”

Samus snapped up the control panel and turned the pod in a short spin.

“So where are we going, Samus?”

There was little that she had to do, but point ahead at a giant gray-brown mass in the middle of the asteroid field.

Curin couldn’t help but gasp at the thing’s size; the asteroid was about the size of a small moon; even the larger rocks that collided with it shattered and rebounded off the thing, leaving little more than a tiny crater.

They eased closer to the larger asteroid, the distance closing from kilometers to a few hundred meters until the giant space rock filled the forward viewport with jagged peaks and deep craters. Samus steered the escape pod towards one of the larger craters, heading for an underlying fissure in the giant boulder.

As they entered, Samus checked the pod’s energy supply:

DANGER: 9% FUEL REMAINING

Plenty of fuel left.

The pod steered inside the deep crack in the asteroid, skimming over large ice crystals that jutted off the sides of the canyon like talons. The light in the shaft was dim, and the pod was cloaked, but Samus could have sworn she saw their reflection in the crystals’ many facets. She assumed Curin thought the same, too,; he was blinking several times and shaking his head.

The pod went deeper into the fissure until all the light from outside was completely blocked off. Samus relied heavily on the pod’s computer screen utnil she was satisfied they were far enough away from the surface and prying scanners (not that she thought someone had managed to follow a cloaked escape pod little over a dozen light years through a Hyper Jump) did Samus move her hand towards the DECLOAK button. The pod was silent, save for the breathing of Curin and the soft whirr of servomotors as Samus shifted in the cramped confines of the pod.

“How much farther are we gonna go, Samus?” Curin spoke up, shattering the silence. “I can’t see a bloody thing in here!”

She didn’t even bother to turn. “Not too much farther. I gotta keep the lights off, or the ice might start to melt. That could cause us real problems.”

The pod spun around a corner, sailing slowly past giant spires of ice that threatened to crush them at a whim. The crystals were outlined in amber wire frames on the navicomputer below, mere reflections of the reality that lay outside the hull. Curin watched it intently as Samus piloted the craft in pitch-black watching them soar past pinnacles of frozen water, their facets perfect in every form.

Then the grid went dead.

“Wha the - ?” Curin tensed.

“That’s all right. It’s just a security device. Jams all sensors that try to probe this far in, sending them false readings.”

“As if anyone would ever bother looking here...”

“You’d be surprised... Let’s see what she looks like after all these years.”

Samus slowly moved her power-suited hand, hovering it inches over the switch to turn on the floodlights, then gracefully flipping it, an act of theater. Samus held her breath as the space before them was suddenly illuminated with high-powered flood lamps from the nose of the escape pod, images of the pod reflected a thousand times on the face of every ice shard. The glare temporarily blinded Curin, even though the forward viewport automatically filtered out most of the bright light. Soon, the large bounty hunter’s eyes adjusted, and he could plainly make out the object that they had traveled so far to find, expending the remaining power supply of the escape pod.

The craft was the shape of an inverted ‘Y,’ two wings bending away from the main body, then hugging several huge ice pillars that spiraled outwards from deep inside the cave. Curin could tell that they could easily rotate from a diagonal position to nearly any angle; the craft obviously could assume more than one position. A third wing sprouted from the top of the fuselage, the main body of the craft jutting outwards in both directions, caked in ice crystals and glowing like a finely cut, prized-polished gem. Despite this, the ship looked like she had just been run off an assembly line, a luxury cruiser that had been rigged for war.

She was an older model, an artifact from years ago when the Space Pirates were approaching their height of raiding spacecraft. She had remained here, frozen in time, deep within the belly of an unnamed asteroid, preserved in ice: she was sleek, silent - and deadly. Curin could see dozens of laser cannons and disguised torpedo launchers along her hull. Even though the craft was old, she was bristling with weaponry and power, still remaining one of the most advanced ships in the galaxy. She sang of battles from the past, of adventure and danger, of intense firefights that she had single-handedly fought in - and won with less than a scratch.

Samus couldn’t help but put her hand on Curin’s shoulder, like a mother to a sun. “There she is. The Hunter IV.”

The older bounty hunter looked at Samus and grinned like a child receiving a brand new toy.

“Let’s take a look inside, shall we. Just don’t expect me to give you the keys to the car just yet.”

Curin’s smile could only broaden.

Chapter 020
Thaw by nameless

"We’ve got about 6 minutes before the reactor core goes cold. This little pod wasn't made for the kind of travel we’ve put it through, she's almost dead." Samus said at length, her gaze still fixated on the relic from a past she could hardly remember.

"Why'd you hide her here anyway, Samus?" Curin asked, still amazed with the vessel.

Samus glanced once more at the gray vessel, a spike among many, protruding from the frigid ice cave. She looked down at the floor and spoke with an evasive vagueness that only a bounty hunter can utter. "I never really intended to come back here, there are many reasons, some personal, some political, but that is of no consequence to us now. Maybe I hid her in hopes that someday I could bring back a past that is as distant as the stars."

Just then an alarm warned that fuel was down to 2% and that the fusion reaction would collapse within minutes.

"Curin, you will have to stay here while I go activate the ship. Right now that little vessel is no more than a deep freezer. I'll have to jump it with my suit's power supply in order to warm up the jumper battery. After that, I'll be able to start the reactor."

"What's wrong with the battery now?" Curin asked.

"This ship has been in an environment with virtually no atomic movement for fifteen years, that battery is frozen solid now, it's too cold even for electricity to move in."

"Oh," Curin pondered on the thought of absolute zero, and cringed at what it would do to his un-protected body. "Don't be long Samus or this pod will be no warmer than that space ship."

"I'll only be a few minutes, let's dock."

The dying escape pod maneuvered towards the frozen star ship, possibly the last function it would ever complete. It extended it’s umbilical cord to meet with a small hatch just under the Hunter’s nose.

Fuel is at 0.9%, a calm and steady voice reported from the depths of the pod.

With the umbilical cord attached, Samus gracefully spun the handle on the pod’s hatch. It rotated quickly, slowly releasing the lock bolts and then stopped dead with a 'thunk'. She tugged on the door and it swung open revealing the smooth flexible sides of the umbilical cord. Curin felt a rush of air as the pod’s atmosphere was sucked into the vacuum of the umbilical cavity and then a cold draft as it blew back into the pod, it’s temperature somewhere between 74 degrees Fahrenheit and absolute zero.

At the other end of the tunnel lay the outside hatch of the Hunter IV, crystallized water vapor clung to the gray surface like a mild frost in Earth’s December.

"I’m going in, close the hatch behind me. It should only take a few minutes for me to jump the engines."

"Good luck Samus."

"Good luck Curin."

And the two hunters departed once again, destined to fend for themselves, if for only a little longer.

Samus clicked in the combination to the hatch lock and jimmied the door to the Hunter IV. Shattered ice crystals erupted from the seal and it opened with a hiss that it had been dying to release for more than 15 years. She stepped directly into the cockpit, it was just as she had remembered it, space aged control panels connected to age old computer and guidance systems. Not a lot had changed in 15 years as far as aesthetics went, it was what lay beneath those key pads that had been neglected by times cold solitude.

Samus ran her hand across the main control panel, a touch which would have instantly frozen her bare skin, and the memories ran up through her fingers and into her mind. But she shook them away, she could spare no time for reminiscing. She approached the engine room, moving through the halls as if she had never left them. There, she immediately connected with the jumper battery. She charged it for 30 seconds until her computer indicated that it was active. Then she proceeded to activate the quantum electron-fission reactor, an outdated, but extremely efficient energy source. The display screen awoke from it’s 15 year slumber and gave Samus a readout as it had done thousands of times before.

Ready for core prep. Proceed?

She verified the command and watched as liquefied helium gushed into the compact transparent column. The tank was primed.

Begin electron insertion?

Yes. The electrons flowed, unseen, into the tank releasing only a slight hum which was filtered away by Samus’ background audio blockers. A gauge on the readout indicated that the voltage was satisfactory.

Activate infra-red exciters?

She initiated the reaction and the clear tank turned bright red as high intensity infra-red radiation saturated the frozen helium. Next, the tank turned from transparent to a murky pink as trillions of minuscule bubbles began to encapsulate the free streaming electrons, carrying their individual quantum wave functions into two identical halves and supplying the Hunter with the energy it would need to operate.

Electron-fission achieved. Reaction stable. The computer finalized. The reaction was perpetuating itself.

After 15 years of waiting, frozen inside a dead comet which had been captured in the gravitational pull of an immense migrating asteroid field, the Hunter IV was alive and ready to go back into battle.

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