Something brushed past Kerukk's shoulder. It was a light patter of steel on steel as the Warframe jostled past. The Warframe looked to be a lieutenant of old. Stout shoulders on a feminine form. The bill of her hat tilted beneath the eye line; and under that bill revealed not eyes but slats twofold of blue light fluttering under wrapped fabric. Bombardier ammunition canisters outlined her vest and ordinance capsules were buttoned into the pouches on each hip. What was previously thought to be tonfa resting against each forearm were actually rail-locked barrels of slender pistols. She paid him no attention. Sinking low to the floor, she bounded from the metal catwalk down into the lower levels of the refinery. Flashes of light followed by gunfire peppered the corpus drones. They careened out of control spinning in a maddening gyre before exploding on the metal tile floor. The corpus snipers ducked low behind insufficient cover. Kerukk motioned to advance on the broken enemy line. He swung his legs across the railing and braced for impact on the refinery floor. Vapor trails of burnt ozone met them as they landed, Lanka shots and tetra pellets sank into heavy grineer steel and several succumbed to the damage sustained. The Lieutenant was nowhere to be found. He returned fire hoping to drive the corpus back long enough to secure a foothold. The sweeping blue energy salvo converged on his muzzle flare. His vision flashed white as he struggled to identify the searing hot sensation from the muscles of his collarbone. He dropped hard on his knee and unceremoniously fell behind the bundle of empty fuel cells. Fearing the worst, he tilted his head back to see what remained of his unit. Venru and Tenkin were returning fire in focused bursts; Venru with a Grinlok and Tenkin with a single Grakata. His party had been halved.
He searched for the Gorgon, his salvation and power in desperate circumstances. The handle was within grasp, but the weight was wrong as he drew it back to his side. White magma poured from the exit trajectory of the gun. As it was raised, only half of the barrel came loose, the other half was welded to the floor. Kerukk drew the Viper from his rear pouch and brought it to bear against the top of the energy cell. The door behind the corpus opened. Out of the hallway flew The Lieutenant. She was flung from the doorway by a cascade of blunted glass splinters. Her back hit the ground hard and momentum tumbled her back to her feet amongst hostile corpus gunners. She drew a long barreled pistol from her hip and took aim at the first of the aggressive new enemies around her. The corpus heavy gunner opened fire. He drew a line across the new target with blue plasma that was silenced as quickly as it started. The wisps of blue light that had spun around The Lieutenant's arms struck out at the firing Supra. The grineer rallied. The Lieutenant held her gun to bare. The barrel was long and diamond in construction, squared in the brake and corpus in the way it hummed with faint energy. Firing off a single shot blew wind into her cloak from the backdraft. She had to embolden the muscles of her arms to keep steady from the kick yet her knees and ankles reeled. The Supra of the Corpus Gunner melted through and through. The splashing metal and the force from the shot flung him into the wall with enough impact to rattle his skull inside his helmet. Venru slotted a bullet into the Grinlok's chamber twice over and pierced the metallic shell of a field-MOA. The grinlok rattled against the cans it was stationed on and drew the attention not only of The Corpus but also the Lieutenant who gave a cursory glance. The door opened yet again to new reinforcements. A bursa's red metal shield carved the ground forward, leading a unit of three more gunners and two shield ospreys, the fifth entity was one that Kerukk had never seen before. Lagging behind the rest was a feminine figure with panes of green glass arcing from her chest and shoulders. Her helmet inexpressive and horned with a glass shard flanked by two panes. Through the gunfire, the muzzle flashes traced the outline of more and more glass shards floating and fluttering but always moving independently of eachother. The lieutenant's demeanor grew rigid. She holstered her sidearm and drew a slender burst rifle. The gun had an unknown composition chiseled in gold with an affixed bayonet. She dropped low, trading fire with the bursa while casting her arm out to jam the weapons of her enemies. Robbed of the artillery turret, the bursa lunged forward ready to sweep the feet out from underneath the Grineer's champion. The sound of roaring treads overshadowed the bell like impact of Tenkin's Grataka. Bullets sparked along the curves of the shield and didn't slow the hellish determination of the machine's approach. The Lieutenant caught the top of the shield with a white-knuckled hand, tumbled over the with controlled ease and drove the bayonet of the burst rifle into the access panel before firing twice.
The Glasswielder closed the distance in the span of a muzzle flash. She sank a jagged fist into the midriff of The Lieutenant and brought her off the ground head over heels. Encapsulated by shimmering energy, the raillocked mechanism whirred to life and locked into position on The Lieutenant's forearms. Kerukk's vision went white and his ears were assailed with drumming and painful bursts. A salvo of vapor trails were intercepted by bright shimmering glass panes that sprung into existence. The grass cracked and the ricochets peppered the walls, floor and ceiling indiscriminately. The mirrors spun fluidly; on the surface of each one was full likeness of of people from Kerukk's past. The drill sergeant. The unnamed corpus sniper. The queens.
The Lieutenant howled- A sound uttered that was wholly unexpected and effectively paralyzing. She leapt towards the pane of glass with the corpus pistol drawn. Energy condensed from her hand into the hammer and barrel and shone like the sunrise against channeled cracks. The glass wielder moved, a sidewise wave of her hand brought forth an arching blade of glass that cleaved through the panels at the Lieutenant's neck level. A moment too late. The force from the pistol shot increased the pressure in the room ten told. Kerukk remembered standing in Tyl Regor's underwater lab. His hand against the thick partition between dry air and the bottom of the ocean. He imagined the result of a crack and the terror to follow. The color of the room drained, and it wasn't until his eardrums ruptured that he felt the pressure digging into his eyes and obscuring his vision. Ringing. Ringing. All of the panels came crashing down, first towards the Glass Wielder, then like the ebbing tide changing course and darting under the Lieutenant's cloak in powdered sand in the backdraft. Stillness. Venru looked up from her prone position. She unclasped her hands from her ears and beheld the visage of two larger than life forces staring eachother down. The Lieutenant was standing, but the essence of life was unmistakably absent from her locked knees and limp shoulders. The Glasswielder was forcibly seated against the wall. She steadied herself with an shaking palm against the ground. Venru crawled up to what she could see of Kerukk's slackened legs. She pulled herself up to his chest and pulled his neck close to check for breathing. Eyes bloodied and ears useless, he shied away from her hands. A sign of life.
"We need to go. We need to go now," Venru said.
She grabbed his collar. Straining against the floor she pulled him back inch by inch. Three hundred and fifteen pounds of muscle and steel.
"Tenkin, Is that you?" Kerukk rasped.
"Tenkins dead," Venru said. "We need to leave. We need to leave now."
Her arms ached and the muscles of her chest fluttered, her brain burned yet her blood was chilled. She looked back amidst pulls to see just how bad the situation was. The Glasswielder had made it to her feet. Until now did she realize just how much of The Lieutenant remained. Five crude holes were in her chest cavity- Through the cloak, such a diameter as to be see clearly the other side; A ruptured ligament connecting shoulder to neck. Her raillocked pistols were extended downward. And the blue light flickered from what remained of her face in the Glasswielder's reflection. Venru strained against Kerukk's weight. Terror hurried her. Terror of regretting every ounce of strength not being used in that moment to Glasswielder's eyes were on her. Cold and inexpressive. From her hip The Glasswielder drew a fist-full of glass throwing knives and flicked them towards Venru with a single motion. Before she could scream, The Lieutenant's whole body turned and fired on the knives, breaking each blade into powdered shards that fell in motes. She saw the side of the lieutenant's face, sundered steel and cloth, organic muscle cut and torn. Most unsettling: a flickering blue eye fogged in death. The Glasswielder regarded The Lieutenant carefully. The barrels swayed and jerked, targeting and retargeting abstractions and even the specks of dirt. A crudge marionette- Machine in the analysis of what constituted enemy action. Venru clawed the side of the bulkhead frame. What remained of her untorn muscles brought Kerukk past the threshold and limply against the access panel. She turned back;
"Escape!" Venru screamed at The Lieutenant.
The Glasswielder's attention fell wholly on her. A glimmer of green energy from her horn and arms sent forth a wide and smoldering glass wall that sizzled the flesh of her fallen allies as it passed over them. The Lieutenant's flickering energy dwindled as her body was cocooned in the frosted layer. The far reaches of the wall continued to expand. The Glasswielder's forearms pressed against eachother and the wall continued to stretch. The green luster from the Glasswielder horn fell into darkness. The Glasswielder limped, tearing a lance from the cooled glass stalagmite hanging from the ceiling. The bulkhead's pneumatic pistons began to spool and push. Kerukk's hand gripped the panel and typed from muscle memory. Venru hurried him along with bated breath as the Glasswielder readied her javelin and aimed at closing bulkhead. The wall was patterned like a fragmentation grenade and the lance was the explosive. Venru dropped down between the rising shield and the face of death. Energy pulsed in the Glass Wielder's throwing arm, and as it was brought up to let loose, the upper body of The Lieutenant burst from her confinements with pops and cracks disturbing and unnatural. Both pistols locked onto the energy signature. Gunfire struck true- an intense salvo of ordinance at point blank. As the Glasswielder fell, so too did the torso of The Lieutenant. The smell of course sand and fine gunpowder was the only thing that followed Kerukk and Venru through the closing door.