Samus
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Samus Aran is the protagonist from the Metroid video game series. When she was three years old, Space Pirates attacked her homeworld, killing everyone except for her. She was left for dead, but the Chozo, an ancient, bird-like species of aliens, rescued her, raised her, and trained her in the art of combat, giving her a suit of powered armor to fight the Space Pirates. After reaching adulthood, Samus went to work for the Galactic Federation for a while, and then left to work on her own as a bounty hunter.
She soon came into conflict with the Space Pirates again; they had seized her adoptive homeworld and were attempting to weaponize dangerous creatures known as Metroids, hovering jellyfish-things that drained life-force. She fought them, and came face-to-face with Ridley, the space dragon who had killed Samus' mother right before her eyes. She defeated him as well, and then destroyed the Mother Brain, and triggered the Space Pirate base's self-destruct sequence.
The Space Pirates tried several more times to weaponize the Metroids, using a substance called Phazon to mutate them (and mutate themselves, for that matter); Samus defeated them time and again, even coming face-to-face with an evil, Phazon-born twin of herself. She also squared off against Ridley time and again, as the Pirates resurrected him in increasingly-creative ways.
After making a costly but devastating assault on the Space Pirate Homeworld, the Galactic Federation decided that it would be cheapest to send Samus to destroy the Metroids once and for all, rather than having to pay her to deal with each new iteration of the Metroid threat. Even this plan was of limited success, because no matter how many Metroids Samus killed, there always seemed to be more (and this also seemed to be true of the Space Pirates themselves); even when the galactic population had been reduced to one Metroid, the Pirates managed to steal it, but finally, they were exterminated once and for all.
Unfortunately, the Metroids were needed to keep a population of dangerous, adaptible, mind-controlling parasites in check, and without the Metroids, the parasites were able to reproduce without limit. Samus dealt with them, too, but given the number of times that the Metroids and Space Pirates have been "exterminated without a trace," the so-called "X parasites" won't be gone for long, especially as the Federation has already tried cloning Metroids and Space Pirates before. Samus put a stop to those efforts as well, but she earned the enmity of the Federation in the process; at the moment, it seems that she's on the run. At this point, all we can do is wait for her next mission.
Metroid: Other M
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The most recently-released Metroid game, in which the Galactic Federation decides that cloning Space Pirates would be a good idea. Currently regarded as the Wardex of the Metroid series because it reduces Samus to a much more passive character in order to justify her accepting limitations on her arsenal. Especially bothersome because the same gameplay could have been justified in a more satisfying manner.
In Warhammer 40,000
Samus Aran is part-Chozo and, as of Metroid Fusion, part-Metroid, which would not endear her to Imperial authorities, but her power suit has massive pauldrons that would put a Space Marine to shame. For this reason, not to mention her status as a one-woman Exterminatus, Samus is sometimes portrayed as a Primarch of a legion of Female Space Marines.
There is also a warp-entity from the Horus Heresy novels known as Samus, who is capable of possessing people. His repeated chant applies equally well to Samus Aran, from the Space Pirates' point of view: "Samus. That's the only name you'll hear. Samus. It means the end and the death. Samus. I am Samus. Samus is all around you. Samus is the man beside you. Samus will gnaw on your bones. Look out! Samus is here."