Note that I updated the previous chapter at the same time.
Epilogue: Basis of Humanity
Filling up another glass as slowly as possible, the bartender passed it down to the patron. He picked up a glass and began to polish it needlessly. But he was running out of methods to stall, so he might as well go now. Setting down the glass, he moved a short distance down the bar toward the new customer.
"What'll it be?" he grated. She had been intently examining a schematic of something that resembled a power grid, and now glanced up at him, long blond hair falling away from her face. Pretty good looking... and her orange bio suit matched the profile exactly. There was no point checking it any further. Before she could answer he casually put a hand to the counter, tapping a small button beneath it.
"Two of the standard," she answered flatly, slapping several small chips on the counter. "One for me and one for the guy at the end of the counter."
Glancing down the bar, the bartender set his eyes upon a young-looking man reading from a portable computer and casually flexing his other hand.
"Bit young for you, ain't he?" the bartender started to say before gun appeared in his face.
"I would describe the enjoyment I would get from shooting you as medium to high," the bounty hunter told him dryly. From her tone, she would do it, too. If even half the rumors about Samus Aran were true...
"Whatever," he answered, as coldly as possible. He filled the order and delivered it to both places. The younger guy just took it absent-mindedly and continued reading. While nearby, the bartender caught a glimpse of his screen and discovered it was a high-level text on biochemistry. A student, maybe? What would he be doing here?
While pretending to wash another glass, always a legitimate bartender activity, the swarthy man took a better look at this guy. His presence here seemed completely out of place; he was the type to be picking up the prison soap. Yet upon further examination, the bartender realized that he was actually quite muscled, and carried himself with unnatural grace. Probably a martial artist type, then. Was he working with Samus?
A man dressed half in technological armor strode up beside Samus and leaned against the bar next to her. She ignored him as he slapped down a hand and ordered a drink. At least she appeared to... she had already identified that he wore light armor, had a bionic arm, one eye was prosthetic and probably enhanced and the claw on one of his arms was rigged to fire low level plasma shots. Medium-difficulty, as far as space pirates went.
"Just thought I'd give you a tip," he told her confidentially from the corner of his mouth. "This ain't like Bounty Hunter HQ. Any station bold enough to declare itself space pirate territory is a dangerous place. You don't go around threatening the bartender. Not unless you want everyone coming down on you."
"I'll keep that in mind," Samus answered, slightly disdainfully. A few more minutes...
"That's good to hear. Wouldn't want a face like yours getting shot in. If you've ever had a gang of space pirates after you... that's a scary thing you don't want to happen."
Samus smiled at him humorlessly, though he failed to understand the irony. The bartender, watching their conversation while casually wiping a cup, shivered involuntarily. He didn't want to think about what exactly that smile could mean. Best to head off this situation before it got any further. Leaning on the edge of the bar, he caught the space pirate's eyes and jerked his head to the right.
Confused, the pirate followed his order and walked to the opposite end of the bar, which was deserted. As soon as they were out of most of the bar's sight, the bartender set his hand down on the pirate's normal limb, digging his fingernails into it slowly. The man winced in pain, but showed no sign of it otherwise.
"Are you crazy?" the bartender hissed. "Do you know who that is?"
"Some newbie chick?"
"That's Samus Aran! Do you want her going off in here?"
"That's Samus?" the pirate gaped, barely remembering to keep his voice down. "Holy crap! And she's just sitting there without a single problem? Shouldn't we be-"
"We prepared for this," the bartender told him lowly, eyes narrowing. He didn't want to tell this oaf anything important but if it shut him up it didn't matter. "We've lured her here just to kill her. This place is a death trap. High-level forces will be down here in a few minutes to take her out. Until then, keep your damn mouth shut."
"Fuck that! The bitch's gonna die for- ugh." The bartender let his fingers stop just before they drew blood. The last thing they needed was morons like this guy... or the morons like the ones crowding around the bar. Evidently they decided to do a bit of vigilante work. At least as vigilante as you could be in a loosely organized piracy organization.
Sighing, the bartender moved to head off a potentially volatile mess before the situation became a bloodbath as it properly should.
With growing annoyance the space pirate watched the young man by the bar continue to read. Who did this guy think he was, anyway? This was one of the seedier bars on an already seedy station, due to being closest to the docking bays, and he didn't seem to care. He didn't even seem to be particularly cautious; he was focused on whatever he was reading.
Getting up from his seat, the man sat on the stool next to the new kid. He was probably not going to last very long. Not if he could help it, anyway. A few other toughs were moving in similar ways, probably with similar ideas. He flashed one of them a wink... maybe they could initiate this kid. If he survived that it'd say quite a bit for his character. But first, he wanted to get a better look at this guy.
Nice black hair, uncombed but still looking civil. Wearing decent black and white attire. A few things were odd about him, though. His back muscles looked unusually built... was it possible that he had some sort of weapon hidden under the back of his shirt? Suicide bombings were far from unheard of. Though he was muscled, he was built in strange places.
Now curious, the space pirate did his best to look closer without being conspicuous. This guy looked normal from a distance, but the more you looked at him the stranger he seemed. At various places on what was visible of his skin there seemed to be thin slits. Though he prided himself in courage, this was beginning to disturb the space pirate.
"Yo, freak," he said. The young man glanced up at him expressionlessly. "You're in our seating area." He wasn't, but the space pirate banged his mug down on the table anyway. The others followed suit. Briefly the man glanced at all of them, then he calmly put away his small computer. "You think you can just leave after that?" the bounty hunter grated.
"Not really," was the calm answer. The next instant the man moved jerked his hand to the right. Instantly the mugs sitting on the bar, and a good portion of the bar itself, split in half with one long, clean cut. All of the space pirates gaped in shock, and immediately looked at the newcomer's hand, which was now raised to his side. Each finger had parted bloodlessly, and long blades had emerged from each.
"Bastard!" one of the standing space pirates muttered, not noticing the young man's hand. He moved to grab the freak by the arm. "I'll-" His voice cut off as a spike emerged from the young man's elbow and pierced the pirate's arm.
"Yer, yer not human!" the sitting space pirate stammered, unable to react.
"Is that a problem with you?" the young man asked, seconds before dark plates began to emerged from small slits in his clothing.
Seeing Tal was into some trouble, Samus set down her glass lightly and fired into that corner of the bar. All the guys near Tal fell away, and he calmly finished his drink and stood up. Behind her, the thugs who had been approaching now all roared and converged upon her, brandishing guns.
In a flash Tal was around the bar, claws slicing through the group's weapons. With a series of devastating silvery flashes he cut through all of them, leaving them to fall to the ground in pieces. Samus used the time to off the rest of her drink and set it down.
The bartender was pulling a gun from under the bar. Kicking her helmet up from her foot and to her hand, Samus bashed him over the head with it. As he fell, she calmly stood up beside Tal. Around them, the entire bar was in an uproar, and shots were being fired at random, not even generally at them.
Without blinking, Samus fused her helmet in place and Tal closed his exoskeleton around his face. As one, they struck.
"Ensign. Techie. Whoever the hell is in charge of this mess. What's going on?"
"Err... that's a bit complicated, sir." The young technician gulped and pretended to be looking very intently at the screens before him. When the man who was more or less the leader of the space pirate station got angry, heads rolled. Sometimes literally, if the swords on his wall were for more than show.
"Make it less complicated," the pirate ordered, flicking a cigar toward the floor. "Don't sugar coat the situation or try to do anything to promote yourself. I know lies when I hear them. What is the state of the plan?"
"It, it should continue without problems, sir." He had to keep up a good front, at least long enough to get himself out of here. On a station like this, backstabbing was as common as drinking. Sometimes more common, in bad seasons. Since he had orchestrated most of this plan, it would be his responsibility.
"Without problems, eh?" the pirate asked, tone dropping to an icy grate. "Is that why they aren't dead yet? Is that why both of them happily destroyed their way out of the bar and are now headed toward an airlock?"
"There are secondary measures, sir," he rushed to explain. "They were forced to split up, and there are forces in their way. The first route contains a heavy squad of pirates-"
"-the ones that all got shot before they could touch guns?"
"-and the E3 block contains another heavy squad."
"-the ones that are currently mincemeat on the floor?"
Sweat began to break out on the young technician's head. This was bad. Very, very bad.
"You think I don't have my own sources, kid?" the older pirate asked, throwing up one leg on his chair's armrest. "I've been in this job a long time. Kids like you have to be pretty quick about things or you don't really serve much purpose." He paused, his eyes flashing malevolently. "Right now, you seem pretty unnecessary."
Jerking her head down, Samus narrowly avoided a bolt of fire. She responded in kind, guessing roughly off the source of the shot. Having an opportunity to look, she discovered that she had taken down one. Firing again, she took out the next closest space pirate. One dove at her, a metallic claw swiping, but Samus barely swept away from the blow, smashed a foot into his jaw just in time to be ready for the next phase.
Yes, this was how life was supposed to be.
Beside her, Tal's claws were flashing with fierce precision. By large he left the long range enemies to her, which suited her just fine. Up ahead another group of soldiers moved to fire upon them, and Samus launched a missile into the ground ahead of them. The explosion left both parties blind.
Bursting ahead of her, Tal was through the smoke in an instant. When it cleared the barricade of space pirates was no more. That was pretty much what she'd wanted him to do. He was generally good at that. She caught up to him and they both swept on.
A massive form loomed in front of them abruptly. Both of them ducked beneath two massive fists, Samus continuing on and up a wall, Tal back flipping away. Raising his arms, the heavily armored pirate sent missiles from both his elbows. They kept Tal busy for a moment, but left Samus open to blast him in the back, an opportunity she gladly took.
It did little damage to the armor, so the hulking pirate barely stumbled forward. But in the time he did so, Tal was already moving forward, claws flashing. A burst of gas exploded from the pirate's leg, and Tal leapt backward to evade it.
No longer in danger of getting in his way, Samus moved forward, catching the bounty hunter's arm before he could fire again and smashing him down into the ground. Tal was back the next moment, a bladed hand ripping away the pirate's helmet. Before he could strike again, Samus ended the battle.
Moments later the wall of the station exploded. Both of them hurtled from it the next instant, flying out into space.
The gun was raised in the air, on the technician's neck. Both of them paused briefly as they saw the explosion. Even after the distraction was over, the leader of the space pirates remained frozen, not firing as he had intended to seconds before.
"They are fleeing!" the technician exclaimed, sweating at the gunpoint at his neck. "The... the plan was not a failure!"
"Oh, shut up," the leader grunted, sitting down heavily and tossing his gun aside.
"W-what?"
"You messed up the plan. Any moron could have done it better than you did. I'm not sure it would have mattered, but they wouldn't have been as thick-skulled as you were. Incompetent fool."
"Then why didn't you kill me?" the technician almost demanded, still not certain why he was alive.
"What's the point?" the space pirate answered fatalistically. "They had this planned from the start- they knew we wanted them to come here. No bounty hunter like Samus Aran would pull off something of this level only to leave harmlessly."
"Do... do you mean..."
"Want a drink?" the other interrupted, pulling a bottle from beside him. Thetrembling technician refused with violent shaking of his head. "Your loss, then." Slowly the commander poured himself a glass of sparkling clear wine. Excellent vintage; it had been a lot of work to steal it. But ah well. "I'm not a poor loser, though. Live and let live. You sure you don't want a drink?"
"What are you talking about?" the technician exploded. The older man refused to even glance at him. Swirling the wine in the glass and looking at it contemplatively, the space pirate lifted it into the air in a toast.
"To Samus and whoever the hell that guy was!"
"You set it to one minute upon trigger? Why?"
"Figured that one of them might try to set it off early," Samus answered, casually tapping ship controls as the vessel continued to put distance between itself and the station. "One minute was all we really would have needed anyway. They can't do much to stop it in that time, and any fool would recognize that."
"Hm." Tal merely continued leaning against one of the bulkheads, his arms folded.
"Have you ever seen hydrogen nitroglycerin proxide detonate before?" Samus asked over her shoulder. "You might want to."
"Sure." Tal moved to where he could see the space station. He had only a brief second to see it hang in space before it exploded in a gigantic blue and purple inferno. A shockwave radiated out from the former station almost instantly, passing over the ship but barely jostling it. Pretty impressive indeed.
"It's a bit weird," he commented slowly, quietly. His tone made Samus glance away from the space ship controls, raising an eyebrow. "Almost all my life was consumed by one goal, and without it everything is very surreal. Its difficult to believe that it's been two weeks, or that I don't have to worry about it anymore."
"And what do you think of it?"
"It's nice, actually. I could get used to this sort of thing."
"Like I said, this isn't the sum total of life. We went to all that work so things could be normal, after all."
"Or as normal as things can be when one is a cross-breed of dozens of monsters and doesn't even vaguely resemble a human any more," Tal said introspectively. "What is humanity, anyway? Isn't that the question we've been asking the entire time? And I don't think we've answered it, between twisted experiments and aliens and monsters, both human and inhuman. Will that question remain forever unanswered?"
Samus smiled at him, just because he was who he was. "Whatever."