Pride and Politics

“Samus Aran,” Olsar said.

The other two looked at him and blinked.

“The blonde?” Braca asked, making a face. Olsar lied to many, but Braca had seen the Baron when he was young and stupid. He knew where the bodies were buried, friends, because he was often the one burying them. “You're telling me that the woman you've been obsessing about for the past year and a half is the Hunter?”

“That is what I'm telling you,” Olsar mumbled.

Bekhesh spat and said nothing.

The three of them were overlooking the tropical plains of Krais, standing on a balcony that loomed over the capital of the Kanvian Empire. What was left of Olsar's sister played in the gardens below, left to what little simple devices Salis had left her. Braca had sampled her several times, the old embers of a crush fanned into a flame designed to keep the man loyal and the sister firmly in check now that Olsar's parents were dead and gone.

Olsar wanted Samus Aran and was not the sort of person that liked hearing the word no come from any lips other than his own. He had gone from being the least important member of his family to the Baron of nine systems with fifty-five planets between them, driven by nothing more than ambition, cunning, and luck.

The other two knew this and knew that he wanted Samus Aran but would probably be willing to share her with them; they knew he wanted her taken out for the trouble she had caused him in his early days and he wanted to own her because she had been the best lay he'd had in his whole life, and his ties to slavers meant that he had taken many turns down that road.

For them, there was no question that she would be his.

The question was in how it would happen.

All three discussed this problem with all the savvy and pragmatism the past six years had taught them. They knew that the Hunter could not be defeated in combat, so simply sending the Tavleks after her was out of the question.

“We remember what happened last time,” Bekhesh spat, grimacing. “She was younger then. Less experienced. She'd be more than a match for the best of us now.”

Bekhesh's words were honest, made all the more painful because he was the best of the Tavlek species, but this was a woman who destroyed armies single-handedly, who wiped out whole species and empires on her own. The destruction of entire planets had been laid at her feet. As good as Olsar was with his Zhaanic blade, he knew he could never measure up.

“So, force is out,” Braca mused. “What does that leave?”

“Trickery,” Olsar answered, his eye falling on his sibling down below.

The words that followed were harsh, severe. The plan he laid out was vicious, the sort of thing those that only knew him publicly would never have thought him capable of. The other two were wiser,  asked questions, made suggestions.

When all three were satisfied they put their plan into action.

And the plan itself?

Documents were leaked to certain parties that painted Olsar's sister as a rehabilitated traitor that had once been an ally of the Zebesians but had since paid for her crimes. Weavel let it slip that he had allied with her once upon a time and one of his rivals decided to investigate by kidnapping the girl.

Olsar, of course, put a bounty on that Zebesian's head.

A few hunters tried for it, but Samus was the one that eventually succeeded. She showed up in her famous gunship and devastated the Zebesian fortifications, journeyed within and destroyed the all those within, killed the elite and rescued the lost girl. 

For her, it was an average day.

Victorious, she journeyed to Krais to pick up her reward, parking her ship and stepping off without her armor activated. Krais was one of many worlds that did not allow active weapons to be used by anyone not tied to the royal family and Samus had long gotten in the habit of going to collect her rewards as herself, trusting that no one would mistake the ship's mechanic for the legendary Hunter.

“Hey, your grace,” Samus said, informal as ever, presenting the girl she'd rescued in the royal palace. “I'm here on behalf of Samus Aran to collect the reward for rescuing the... huh. Baroness? Noble? I'm not sure what her actual title is. Baronette? Anyways, here she is.”

The girl was taken, the reward given.

The neural bomb that was detonated at that moment robbed an entire city block of consciousness, but Samus was only dazed.

So they hit her again.

And a third time.

The fourth time knocked her on her ass.

The fifth stole her consciousness away.

Her ship was registered as having docked and then left. Olsar gifted it to Weavel along with everything inside of it.

So far as the universe knew, Samus had saved the day and then left, as was her wont.

In reality, the unconscious blonde was sent to Ariime and the waiting arms of Salis.