It'd been a slow month until then for Samus Aran. Not many assignments from the Galactic Federation, mostly being sent to wipe out the odd Space Pirate outpost situated just outside Federation territory or jurisdiction. Jobs from other sources had either been ones she was over-qualified for, or ones that she didn't feel were right; even bounty hunters had standards.

So when her handler sent her a communique saying the cargo ship GFS Sleipnir and its escort, the destroyer GFS Ragnarok had gone missing on a patrol in an unmapped star system, she jumped on the opportunity. The Sleipnir and Ragnarok had technically been inside Federation space, but not all solar systems were mapped, given that there were millions of stars in her galaxy alone.

She was onboard her Hunter-class gunship; the flexible "Delta" variant she normally used instead of the more nimble and combat-centric "Tau" she'd utilized during the Phazon War or the older, more complex and more durable "Beta" she'd used on Tallon IV.

Samus made the jump to the designated system, dropping to a sub-light speed inside the Oort cloud. By proceeding at sub-light from there she would be much harder to detect, and her ship's passive sensors would scan the system and gather all the data they could. The gunship's autopilot would be able to handle the transit through the cloud of cosmic debris, so she began to run over a recently-formulated contingency plan.

The biggest problem she'd had of late was that severe malfunctions or damage to her suit would cause her to lose many of her suit's functions and weapons. So far she'd been lucky enough to be on planets where there were already copies or variants of the upgrades, but she didn't want to rely on finding advanced civilizations where convergent technology compatible with her base Power Suit had developed. That meant a backup of the Varia Suit she wore would be needed too.

Her plan for this was to store most of the upgrades in her gunship, pending any need for them. That way, if her suit was damaged she'd be able to recover the functions easily enough. If her ship was damaged in a crash and she wasn't onboard, the upgrades would be ejected over an adjustable radius of up to 10 kilometers. The ship already had self-repair routines, and her Power Suit could track the upgrades wherever they went. If something bad happened, she'd be ready.

Samus' gunship exited the Oort cloud and entered the system proper. It seemed to be unremarkable for the most part, and had a cursory similarity to the Sol system in its layout. There were a few rocky planets within a few astronomical units of the yellow sun, then an asteroid belt, and some gas giants. A few dwarf planets clung to the outer edges of the system, and one was an obvious extrasolar capture judging by its contrarian orbit. But all that was still fairly unremarkable, and there were still plenty of differences from the system that had cradled humanity.

Her sensors began to scan for Galactic Federation-issued Identify Friend or Foe signals, and after a whole hour none were detected. Even faded signs of combat were absent. It was as though they'd traveled to the system and disappeared.

As she neared the asteroid belt a few AUs from the sun, her vessel's communications suite picked up a faint signal. It immediately notified the pilot, showing up on a screen to her left. Tapping in a few commands isolated the nature of it.

It was an amplitude modulated radio wave, an ancient technology used for communications, and a quick analysis confirmed it was not a natural phenomenon. Because of its relative inefficiency, no known faction in the galaxy had used it for centuries. Combined with how isolated this system was from known colonized or inhabited space and the seemingly inhospitable worlds there, the only explanation she could come up with was that an ancient satellite had somehow made its way to this system.

After entering a few commands, she heard the signal clear up almost instantly. It sounded like speech, and after a few moments of trying to identify the language from a vast database of alien dialects, it came up as plain English. Of course, Samus recognized it almost immediately, even though the signal was being interrupted by the occasional piece of space debris.

"-News folks! That crazy kid we all know and love is up to his old tricks out west. Not much info's come out about him since he left a few years back, but our buddies in pow- -mor just made contact with a government out west a few days ago. And now they've found out our boy has been fightin' the - -ight over there too. That's right kiddies, that shield of hope ain't gone, he's just gone to kick some ass somewhere else. Consider me officially in a good mood folks, even with that Fran-ein offensive goin' on. This is - -og! Owwwwwwww! And you're listening to - News Radio, bringing you the truth, no matter how bad it hurts. And now, some music," A male voice announced.

Then the music started playing. A couple twangs on a string instrument, then a keyboard-type instrument.

"Maybe you'll think of me when you are all alone.
Maybe the one who is waiting for you.
Will prove untrue, then what will you do?"

She realized that the signal was coming from what seemed to be empty space. A scan with the ship's active sensors revealed what was there: an Einstein-Rosen bridge. It also revealed very faint ion trails leading to the wormhole, showing that the Sleipnir and Ragnarok had been there, and possibly gone through to investigate the signal.

"Maybe you'll sit and sigh, wishing that I were near.
Then maybe you'll ask me to come back again.
And maybe I'll say 'Maybe'."

After some contemplating, she came to the conclusion that her best shot at finding the missing destroyer was to go through that wormhole.

"Maybe you'll think of me when you are all alone.
Maybe the one who is waiting for you.
Will prove untrue, then what will I do?"

She could report back to the Federation and recommend they send a team to investigate the phenomenon more thoroughly, and go on with other assignments while she awaited news from such a team, all the while believing whatever she wanted to about the fate of that crew.

Or Samus could try to rescue those marines and space jockeys herself, giving them help while they were more likely to be alive at a greater personal risk. The choice was an obvious one to her.

"Maybe you'll sit and sigh, wishing that I were near.
Then maybe you'll ask me to come back again.
And maybe I'll say 'Maybe'."

As the tune ended, Samus set a course to head into the wormhole, hoping it'd drop her near the objective. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as her vessel entered the rift, and opened them a few moments later to find herself in a new solar system.

Her navigation systems determined she was still in the Milky Way galaxy based on star positions, but struggled to establish contact with the nav-bouys that aided in travelling the cosmos. In the meantime, they began to manually ascertain her location by matching the stars to known charts. The ship dropped sensor and navigation buoys near the anomaly, marking her point of ingress.

The comm systems picked up that same signal from earlier, but much stronger. What was more, a Galactic Federation-issued distress beacon was emanating from a location on the surface of a body 1 AU from the star, a few thousand kilometers from the source of the signal that had caught her attention.

When her ship's computer said she was in the Sol system, she dismissed it as a malfunction. But approaching the third rock from the sun she passed several planets, which increased a feeling of dread each time she neared one.

First was a teal gas giant with an axial tilt of around 90 degrees that put it on its sides, so its axis of rotation was about parallel to the plane of the system. Next came a larger golden giant, with majestic rings that almost anybody would recognize. Then an even larger gas giant with a single red spot passed by. An asteroid belt and a red planet just intensified the nagging at the edge of her mind.

Samus approached the planet the beacon came from and set a course to land as close to the source as possible. She saw what looked too much like Earth for comfort, but the planet's surface was drab from what one could only assume was terrible abuse. The oceans were gray, most of the land was brown, and ancient satellites orbited the planet aimlessly and without purpose.

On a hunch, she scanned the sun, hoping that she'd jumped into the distant future and not just a distant place. But it was exactly where it should've been. Judging by the positions of the planets, her onboard computer determined it was sometime in the mid to late 23rd century, assuming this was the real Sol system and not some twisted copy. With all the bizarre things she'd seen thus far in her life, she considered it a serious possibility that this was a duplicate of the Sol system, just as it was possible she was in the past, if not the one familiar to her.

The bounty hunter tapped her exposed neck twice with her index and middle finger, and a helmet materialized around her head, sealing her suit. She never more than vaguely understood the science of the energy-matter conversion that allowed her to simply materialize or dematerialize the suit literally at will, despite having read several Federation hypotheses on the technology.

She felt the gunship shake as it entered the atmosphere, heating the exterior of the hull to several thousand degrees. After a few minutes, the fireball surrounding her ship ceased to exist, and a final approach vector was entered.

A few dozen kilometers from her target, a blast of energy hit her ship from below, damaging one of the engines. Samus attempted to level the craft and succeeded somewhat, putting it into a more controlled descent and angle. After that, she prepared to eject. Any upgrades already prepared as per her contingency plan would eject with her.

After a sigh, she slammed her left hand down on the eject button, and she shot through the floor of her craft, an energy field generated by the vessel slowing the first half of her descent.

After that, she began to fall unhindered through the night sky. Remnants of the energy field had given her a bright golden aura, and supercharged her shields in preparation for impact.

When Samus finally impacted the ground, her shields took most of the damage, and most of that was absorbed by the excess shielding that had been imparted on her prior to reaching terminal velocity.

In what the huntress regarded as a massive stroke of luck, she was no worse for wear after falling at least two kilometers to what seemed to be the hard, dry dirt of a desert.

Putting all other concerns aside for the moment, she quickly went over her inventory of equipment and weaponry.

The Varia Suit she wore was still fine, not damaged to the point of being reduced to baser functions. She had her Power Beam, a Wave Beam and an Ice Beam. A hundred-fifty missiles were ready for use. Her Morph Ball, Boost Ball and Bombs worked fine. The Space Jump boots and Grapple Beam were functional. The visor functions were all there, Combat, Scan, Thermal, X-Ray, Dark, Echo and Command. Her shields read as full, with 99 units and 2 energy tanks in reserve. The subsystems that came with her equipment, like the Grapple Voltage, were also online.

She got up from her kneeling position and looked at the sky. It was night, and the moon was Earth's, but that didn't disprove her earlier hypothesis about this being a fake Sol system or a simulation of some sort. Looking around, she realized she was in a valley of some sort, and the hazard indicator on the left side of her heads-up-display indicated the area was radioactive.

She began to head for what could pass as a trail, one that led out of the depression. Rocky terrain was nothing new to her, and she traversed the radioactive pit without much effort. At least until she saw something that ranked as one of the more disgusting things she'd seen.

It looked like a twisted mix of a man and something else, with six legs that each resembled human arms. The face, if it could be called that, had sunken eyes and three repulsive tendrils coming from where its mouth would be. Tumor-like growths engulfed its back, and its humanoid torso lacked any arms to speak of.

She quickly scanned the creature for later study and began to blast away at it with her Power Beam. The yellow bolts of energy tore away at it bit by bit, but at an agonizingly slow pace. The tormented expression on the abomination's face almost begged for death, and Samus felt obligated to grant that wish out of decency.

The creature lashed at her with its tongues, one of which grabbed her upper left arm. She couldn't tug away at it, so she pointed her Arm Cannon at the monstrosity, charged a shot and fired. The monster's head erupted in a geyser of dark red blood.

This was a more extreme instance of gore than what she was used to, but not unheard of. Sometimes her enemies would be reduced to a mist of blood, but that was clean compared to this. She'd ended thousands of lives, most or all of them creatures or sapient beings who'd deserved it, and killing came naturally to her.

She punted away an intact eyeball that seemed to be staring at her, and walked out of the pit by way of the trail she'd spotted earlier. Exiting the caldera, she looked out at the horizon, slowly spinning about to get a full view.

It was desert all around. Dirt, rocks and the occasional bush were the main features of the landscape. To her east was a tall, fairly narrow mountain. Not much was to her north or south. Gazing west, she saw a massive structure in what seemed to be a city. Lights came from within but what might've been buildings on the outskirts emitted none, for reasons unknown.

But it was a sign of civilization, and her best chance at finding out where she was. She began to march west, watching for any more creatures that could attack her.

After an hour of travelling, during which several bloated insects attacked her and she took a detour southward trying to find a way around a mountain range, she saw smoke in the distance, coming from what her incomplete, but rapidly growing map indicated was a cove. She approached it with haste, assuming the smoke was from a campfire of some sort. Then the cacophony began.

It sounded like small explosions ringing out from over the hill, with shouting and cursing barely audible over the din. Samus crouched and peeked over a cliff, intent on figuring out what was going on.

Below her was a pitched battle. The defenders were dressed in ancient clothing, metal plates and spikes covering the parts of their upper body that weren't bare. They were filthy, primitive-looking, and had decaying bodies hung around the structures. Inside several cages were humans who had clearly been heavily abused by their captors, a conclusion only reinforced by her subsequent scan of them.

She then trained her Scan Visor towards the battle and scanned one of the defenders.

Morphology: Human Raider

Subject is equipped with firearms and explosives of the type used in the 20th and 21st centuries of the human Common Era, albeit in very poor condition. Numerous wounds indicate extensive experience in harsh conditions. Analysis indicates specimen makes heavy usage of recreational drugs, and is malnourished. Imbalance of chemicals in the brain indicates probable mental instability and the presence of sexually transmitted diseases. Probable criminal.

Scanning the other defenders yielded the same results, and they continued to be cut down by the attackers while in turn inflicting casualties on them. So she scanned the attackers, who were clad in more protective and uniform clothing.

Morphology: Human Soldier

Subject is in good physical condition, and wears armor optimized for use in desert environments. Weapons are firearms and explosives in fair condition. No harmful substances present in the subject's systems, save for residual amounts of alcohol.

Though the soldiers made an initially successful advance, a charge on their part was followed series of explosions coming from the ground at their feet, and several perished or were severely injured.

Samus felt an urge to aid them. She could tell by instinct alone that the defenders were disgusting human beings, and their behavior coupled with her scan data reinforced that thought. Perhaps they were the lesser of two evils, but she decided to focus on the raiders.

She leapt down from the cliff, somersaulting in the air before landing, and joined the fray. A raider turned to see her and opened fire, his bullets chipping away at her shields before she hit him in the chest with a missile. Another one a few meters away threw a grenade at her, which she outran. The explosive detonated, and caused a massive secondary explosion as an ammo cache burst.

The huntress was caught inside the second blast before she could get clear, and it wiped out nearly two full energy tanks, leaving her down one tank already.

As she stepped from the flames, she saw that there was only one attacker standing, and a dozen defenders. The warrior, who wore a brown trenchcoat and a combination gas mask-helmet with red lenses, didn't falter as the survivors trained their weapons on him. His head twitched just slightly, looking in her direction.

One of the raiders looked behind her, presumably so she could see the flames of the ammo dump, which Samus had just escaped.

"Oh, fuck! We got a tinny!" The female yelped, her eyes now fixed on the orange-clad bounty hunter.

Whatever that meant, it was quite clear it had just made her a higher priority. The raiders did an about-face and began to fire at her. It showed a lack of coordination and thought that they put their backs to an enemy they were more familiar with.

Bullets pounded on her shields and she entered her Morph Ball, boosting to cover on her right before exiting and firing her Arm Cannon during each brief window of opportunity. The combined firepower of twelve weapons was not to be underestimated, and they chipped away at the corner of the building she hid behind.

Samus activated her X-Ray Visor and observed from safety as the lone warrior efficiently dispatched each of the distracted raiders. The first two each received a fatal shot through the heart, and then one had her skull blown apart. He successfully drew some of their fire and took several rounds to the torso, ignoring them all. A trio of the raiders dropped to further fire, and the warrior moved to his own cover, reloading his rifle.

Samus switched back to her Combat Visor and hit three of the raiders with a Super Missile. One of the remaining three aimed a particularly stout rifle at her and fired a large, subsonic projectile. It still moved too fast for her augmented reflexes to react, and hit her square in the breastplate.

Her shields died as the explosive detonated at point-blank. Knocked flat on her back, she lay there powerless as her suit locked down and attempted to restart. After that, she took several shots from another raider. Theoretically, if her suit ran out of energy then it should have dematerialized, but right now it was out of energy and inexplicably still there. Of course, her current suit had never been run out of energy before, so it was strictly theoretical.

The pain intensified. She was fully aware of her surroundings, because she'd long been able to simply ignore pain of any level. But this was more intense than almost anything she could remember. The only comparable thing was the feeling of initially being corrupted with phazon on Norion. This worked against her, as she was fully conscious for a torturous experience.

The warrior from earlier appeared behind her attacker and drove a large knife with a red grip into his back with one hand, withdrawing it and then using his rifle in the other to fire a single round each into the hearts of both of the still-standing wretches.

He moved to free the prisoners she'd seen earlier, and escorted them into the building Samus had hidden behind after checking it, probably to make sure there weren't any raiders who'd hidden during the attack. Afterwards he returned to Samus and knelt down next to her, pulling out a hand-held radio that resembled a black brick with a short antenna and a few knobs and buttons.

"Colonel Moore, Cottonwood Cove secured. The troopers you sent with me are all KIA, and so are all the raiders. I've secured several civilians, probably victims of physical and sexual abuse. I convinced them to sit tight and gave them a few stimpacks each," The warrior said.

"I hear you. There's a platoon of troopers headed your way, they'll be there inside of ten minutes."

"Roger…" The warrior looked at Samus. "I have to take care of something, I'll be out of touch for a while." He turned off the radio and slid it under his trenchcoat. He placed the butt of his rifle on the ground near her, his left hand on the handguard.

He touched her abdomen for a moment, then ran his hand around to her lower back and felt around that area as well. She felt some pain each time, and had tried to aim her Arm Cannon at him before he even made physical contact with her, but her Power Suit's lockdown prevented her from moving it more than a millimeter even with all her effort.

"If you hadn't come in back there, I would've had a few dozen new holes to breathe through. I owe you for that. It looks like you took a few rounds of .308; not many people can take four of those through the gut and survive. Shit, most kick the bucket after two or three. At least they all have exit wounds, so I won't have to dig 'em out. Of course, if you aren't human then you might be fucked. I don't know. I'll get you someplace safe, fix you up, and we can call it even."

He pulled a small device from his coat, one shaped vaguely like a pistol, and grabbed a hold of her arm before pulling the trigger. A sphere of light surrounded them, and the huntress finally passed out.