Settling In

[Samus Aran]

For a while, they rode through the streets of Coruscant, CR-529 pointing out shops, landmarks and districts. It felt perfunctory. While Samus tried to pay attention, she felt like she was missing all the detail. Everything that laid beneath the surface. She didn’t want the visitor tour, she wanted to know what the city was like. She knew that would take time, that it wouldn’t come from a one-over by a robotic etiquette dispenser. But she felt impatient. Out-of-place.

“Very well,” she said after she’d had enough. “CR-529, take me to my accommodations.”

“As you say, Miss Aran. We have prepared an apartment in city block 78-56.”

They flew up through the lanes of airborne traffic, like lines of ants in the sky, and broke off towards a building that stood out no more or less than the others. There was an outlying wing on the floor they stopped at, and the taxi parked in one of the available spaces before opening. Samus stepped out.

“This way, Miss Aran.”

The floors were clean and carpeted – not what Samus had expected from this city, ostentatious in its embrace of the technological. She guessed they were self-cleaning or some other boastful attribute. Her apartment was good enough; slightly smaller than what she’d had back at home, but she’d rarely used it anyway. She was used to sleeping in her ship, which was small, cramped, but simultaneously as spacious as the known galaxy. She hadn’t thought about that. No outer space meant she’d be travelling everywhere by foot, or ground vehicle.

“You’ll find everything you need here,” said CR-529, and Samus found herself irritated by his interruption of her train of thought to reel off more meaningless niceties. “Here’s the bedroom, and the kitchen – very nice set of cookers, all the necessities -”

“That’s very good,” said the bounty hunter. “You don’t need to stay, I’ve got everything I need.”

“As you say, Miss Aran. Should you need anything, just press the buzzer.”

The door slid shut and she was left alone. She locked it out of habit, knowing as always that it would do little against a competent attacker, but always had the potential to make a difference.

She relaxed and dematerialised her power suit. In a moment it was gone, and she was back in the clothes she’d left in – skin fitting boots, shorts, and a high-necked tank top that cut off at the waist. She pulled the band out of her hair and it fell in a loose mess around her neck. Then she leapt onto the couch and let out a long breath.

For a while her mind just blanked. Involuntarily she ran over the events of the day. It had all started in the darkness, with that face. So brief, yet so important. All the rules, the words – they were etched into her memory as though into a rock with a laser beam. Then the fountain. The alien, the red-haired man, the blonde boy, the dark-haired woman, the blonde woman with kukris, the young sunglasses-clad boy, the other blonde woman, the girl with the staff, the madman, the swordsman, the armies, the bikes, the horses, the speeches, the factions, the murder, the decision, the ride, the city, the faces, the places, the feelings, the … pain. The exhaustion.

She fell asleep.

Samus awoke to sunlight filtering in through the tinted glass wall of the apartment, informing her that it was day. “Fuck,” she said aloud. Now she had to face the fact that the previous day had not been a dream, or at least was part of a longer, continuous dream that showed no signs of ending anytime soon. She spent another minute making herself comfortable on the sofa, rolling over and trying to get warm against the leather. It was fruitless. She also needed to piss really badly.

Staggering to what she assumed, hoped, was the bathroom, she turned on the light and took care of business. A shower later, she was feeling a little more fresh and able to face the day. She swore, realising that the only clothes she had were still dirty from the day before. Tossing the towel aside, she thought about another exact pair, and began to summon. Once she was fully clothed, she set to investigating the fridge. Not much. Some bread, eggs – she assumed chicken of some sort – and meat. Samus was a vegetarian for the most part, but didn’t like to waste food, and so retrieved it along with the bread. The machine did the cooking for her, so it was a simple matter of telling it what she wanted, then waiting.

She felt better after the food. Purely physically – her mind was still reeling. She stretched out of habit, wondering what she would do with the day. Did the Omniverse have an internet? Where could she get informed about the goings on?

The best way, she decided, would be to go out and about. Once she was finished with her morning exercises, she summoned her power suit and stepped out into the wing of the apartment block where the taxi had landed last night. It was gone, no surprise, but she was feeling up to a little more summoning now. It was time to get the Hunter back.

Her ship had taken many forms over the years – some larger than others, including the one that she’d been given by the Galactic Federation, only a day or two ago before all these events had transpired. She preferred her old ship, and somehow doubted that being smaller would make a difference to the ship’s capabilities in this ‘verse’ anyway. It was a classic, and its destruction due to a mistake of overconfidence was something she still hadn’t forgiven herself for. But she could rebuild it! Perhaps the Omniverse wasn’t so bad after all.

The finished product wasn’t quite the same. For one, it was significantly weaker – it had no weapons, and she felt like it wouldn’t hold up five seconds in a battle – but it looked the same and it felt the same to pilot. Samus spun the wheel, cartwheeling it over the bannister of the parking wing and into the sky. With a bit of thrust, she was off.

[Samus Aran]

Coruscant, it turned out, wasn’t too different from what Samus was used to. At least, from what she’d seen of it so far. The bright lights faded during the day, but lit it up at night. In the daytime, you could see the streets and buildings clearly. But at night you saw the people clearly. Night time is when things got interesting.

It was dusk now, and the streets were beginning to light up, taking on the hard outlines and vivid colours that would define it once the sun went down. Samus had yet to see the lower tiers, but she expected them to be much the same – only all day round. The military presence was heavy up here, and what little crime she’d seen had been stamped out almost instantly. Even seeking the dark spots as she did, she’d gotten little trouble. That was strange, as a young and – she knew it – attractive woman. Almost more worrying than the opposite. There was something strange about this city. Something almost intangible. But she’d learned a lot in a week.

She’d had a chance to glimpse the Emperor’s supreme guard, once, when she’d returned to the inner districts without her power suit on. If the storm troopers had oppressive attire, these guys put them to shame. They towered above her at almost eight feet tall, clad in power armor that was nearly as wide as it was tall. Some of them bore chainsaws attached to their guns, others with what looked like flamethrowers. ‘Space Marines’, they’d been called in their homeworld. She knew this thanks to the Dataverse, the Omniverse’s version of an inter or extra-net. It hadn’t taken her very long to upgrade her suit with mobile access to this ‘dataverse’. She wondered whether it was a true verse in the sense of the Nexus or Coruscant. The Dataverse itself offered mixed results to that particular query. It was possible, it seemed, to enter it like any other verse, but unlike any other verse its contents were accessible, remotely. It seemed to follow different rules to the other verses. Then again, was there any consistency to the Omniverse? That question also left Samus with mixed results.

She’d had ample time, now, to consider her situation and her goals in this place. It was difficult, though, to make any decisions without information. In that respect, Samus felt as though she was an infant still making her first teetering steps towards adulthood. Given that, her only goal right now could be to continue gaining knowledge. Coruscant certainly seemed like the best place to do it. Though, now she could access the Dataverse from anywhere, her options had been freed up somewhat.

But the bounty hunter felt impatient. As often happened, she felt like she could be doing more, if only she could figure out how. She knew from experience that she was probably right. She also knew that rushing her advance could lead to disaster. So she resolved to take the smart approach; keep gathering information, and keep an eye out for opportunities.

As it so happened, one found her. A message to her Dataverse inbox, which had lain starkly blank of anything interesting … until now. Words from the Judge. Apparently next week there was to be a celebration of the Empire. Samus snorted; one of her genuine, rarely-seen smiles catching her off guard for reasons she didn’t immediately know. It wasn’t that the premise was silly. Celebrating the anniversary of the nation’s founding? It made sense. Maybe it was because, from what she’d seen of the city officials so far, a true ‘celebration’ seemed hilariously out-of-place. As she listened to Dredd’s speech, she pictured him grinning widely and waving to a cheering crowd. That was enough to send her into stitches. She composed herself, feeling a little embarrassed in the middle of the street, clad in her full gear. Isolation had to be getting to her. It had never done before, but then …

She took a deep breath and focused back on the message. Potential threats. A chance to prove herself to the Empire. Vague threats from Dredd himself. It seemed as routine and boring a mission as they could get. But they all mostly were, right up until they weren’t.

Samus looked up at the sky. A promising mission. She’d do it. But in the meantime, the night was young.