It only takes about half a second before everything goes to hell, and this time, that was Ember not getting the jump on a Gunner who happened to walk around the corner while she put down her Boltor to swap to her pistols. The Gunner was just as surprised as we were, and while he tried to run, I was on him in a second or less, more or less tackling him with my greatsword in hand. Spinning with all of my momentum, I cleaved right through the armor, splitting him in half at the waist. Of course, as I did that, the alarms attached to the suit this guy was wearing went off, alerting the rest of the ship to our presence.
We backed away from the entrance, getting to both sides and preparing for the ensuing firefight, with Nova using a portal to snug herself in the alcove above the door.
I was on the left side by myself, leaning into my light machine gun, ready to go all-out as soon as the door opened. Nova had her shotgun out, aiming straight down with one hand, a Molecular Prime brewing in her hand, ready to plaster some Grineer brains all over the walls. Ember was to the right side, along with Loki, both using dual revolvers, because nothing says ninjas like traditional double-action revolvers. Sure, the design was hundreds of years old, but damn, do they work.
The doors opened, and the entire doorway was crammed with Elites, their closed masks not showing their sneering faces, along with a Bombard, launcher aimed and ready. I let out a savage Roar that could be heard from outside my helmet, and held the Soma up to head level, gunning for all it was worth.
The heavy armor allowed them to push through the first smattering of our fire, though my rounds did take down a fair few of them, though they kept coming. We backed off, letting more of them into the room as we ducked for cover behind storage crates as they started to return fire. With all of the noise of my rifle and their pistols, along with the constant fire from their rifles and shotguns, none of them noticed a few of their number were being dropped with a shotgun from above.
I emptied a whole clip before ducking behind a crate, but upon trying to reload, a melee unit came around the side and tried to blow my head into next week with a power gauntlet. I blocked it with the rifle, but it sent my new mag spiralling out of the gun, as I had yet to secure it within properly, and leaving me unable to return the favor.
I instead rolled over, grabbing the handle of my sword as I narrowly dodged the opposite fist in the space I had recently been occupying. As I pulled the full weight of it to bear, he lunged at me again, but I just stepped back and swung in a full circle, letting the weight of the sword be my support, and in a fraction of a second I felt the blade hit the helmet, stop for a short time, then continue on through, dropping the cyborg without wasting a shot, as I was now down a full one hundred twenty rounds with that clip gone across the floor to some forgotten corner.
Ember and Loki were being backed into a corner, so I switched the greatsword to my right hand, using my left to help me vault my massive weight over the crate, and use the rest of my momentum from that to spin repeatedly, blade out, catching unarmored faces with it, damaging armored faces, and generally causing enough mayhem to divert their attention away from the two squishy enemies that they could easily overwhelm within seconds.
I stopped as I got dizzy, only to be blasted off my feet by an explosion from directly behind me, knocking me solidly into the wall first, then the floor, all in one smooth motion. Scrambling to my feet, a Bombard had been missed in my spinning perceptions of the room, and had knocked down a decent amount of my shields, my Iron Skin having worn off without me realizing it.
I snapped my fingers, which meant nothing to the enemy, but everything to Loki. In an instant, a blinding light goes off from the corner, and all of the Grineer drop their weapons as though they burn with a horrible heat, which was basically what had happened. In the instant that it took the Bombard to grab his knife from his belt, I had re-applied the Iron Skin, and was fully ready to go toe-to-toe with this big lump of flesh and armor bigger than myself, which, as a Rhino, is nothing to turn one's nose at. That nose might get broken, or worse, burned, frozen, shocked, mutilated, torn, injected with deadly chemicals, nailed to a wall, crushed, or ripped apart at the molecular level. Best not risk it.
I ran at the Bombard as he finished unsheathing his serrated knife, sword up straight, scraping against the ceiling, ready to swing, but the Bombard caught my blade in his hand, twisted it to the side forcibly, and stabbed at me with the knife, forcing me back, and forcing my sword to clatter to the ground, leaving me with my guns, and only my guns. Instead of going for my gun, which could give the Bombard enough time to impale me nicely, Iron Skin be damned, I instead closed the distance to the brute, lunging for a left hook to the face, only to be stopped again by a slap with the opposite hand, allowing me to do a quick handspring back and see Loki and Ember taking out the rest of the room's inhabitants as they were forced to take cover without their guns.
The Bombard closed to me, forcing me back, out into the middle of the room, where there were many corpses of his fallen comrades, making me step quickly and carefully as I maneuvered my way back. The Bombard stooped to pick up a Grakata from one particularly upright arm, but I dodged inside his arm's reach and stomped on the arm with a downwards stroke, and bring my leg back up to knock the Bombard directly in the visor, causing him to stumble. Those armor suits are hard to keep upright, and if they go down once, it'll be the last time.
His focus wholly on advancing on me now, I back up to the closed door, the Bombard hot on my tail. As he closes to me, he swipes, but I take the hit, the Iron Skin protecting me from the slicing motion. If it were a stab, I might not be so lucky.
I support myself on either side of the doorframe, jump up, and kick the large suit directly in the chest, sending him to the floor, on his back, exactly like a turtle; he's unable to roll onto his stomach to even attempt to get up.
I look up to Nova, shaking my head. There was no need for her to waste an M Prime on the one guy, as I had it completely under control.
I ran and slid back to where my sword was, picking it up, spinning back around and rolling back into a slide back over to the struggling crimson suit with a rotting clone somewhere within.
Standing over him with my sword in hand, tip resting on the floor, I saluted him. It was a good fight, but just like anything else, it ended in our favor, as it usually does for Tenno. I hefted the sword up with both hands, and using one foot to stop him from struggling, plunged the blade straight through him, ending it with one fell swoop.
Nova leapt down, landing lightly, and without a sound. Her Sobek rocked on her back, her Zorens clinking around her waist as she did so.
Ember and Loki emerged from the piles of corpses that were now piled high in the corner of the room. Loki threw me my rifle, which had been discarded on the edge of the room, and I quickly filled its' ammo reserves with that which had been dropped by the many, many, many guys now sleeping with the koi in the storage bay.
I shrugged, and lead the way into the hallway, which of course lead out to an enormous open room, complete with a loading dock in the middle, covered in crates. On the other side of the room, I could just make out the reason why we were here, giving orders to some troops to find us. You'd think they'd realize that the sixty or so dudes who had entered a small, dead end walkway and hadn't come back in a few minutes would be worthy of inspection, but this was Lech Kril we were talking about, who is certainly more brawn than brains, so I guess it kind of evens out. Ember perches on top of a stack of crates, levelling her rifle on him. She raises a hand, fingers outstretched. For us, that meant move your ass, but don't shoot...yet. As soon as she fires, it's a free-for-all.
The fact that a fully charged shot from her Lanka, which is an armor-piercing rail cannon capable of disabling Grineer attack gunships in a single shot can only destroy the shield generator on Kril's back, means that we're in for some shit as soon as we get to him. Or rather, when he gets to us. Plenty of Tenno have to complete this task before; we're living proof of that. We're anything but first-responders. Unlike some Tenno, who often take on a myriad of missions, we specialize in defending objectives and assassination of key targets.
I jump from the entrance platform to a pipe leading out of the wall, climbing it to have a vantage point on both entrances to the massive dock, creeping across it, my boots clanging on the steel, but masked by the machinery below, coupled with the heavy footfalls of the Grineer themselves.
Loki cloaked with the help of his Shade, heading for the tallest stack of shipping containers on the loading dock, which put him at nearly the same altitude as I was at. Nova followed suit, albeit without the help of a cloak, but a well-timed Zoren-copter got her out of sight before some grunts rounded the corner to search among the crates, after which she climbed the side that was temporarily outside of their line of sight. .
I moved down the pipe some more, right to the end, where it fell off and lead deep into the recesses of the underbelly of the docks. It would be easy for me to jump off into the dock in order to take out any of Kril's troops if they managed to corner Loki and Nova. Checking my Iron Skin, I let the old layer come off and reapplied a fresh coat, just to make sure I wouldn't have it falter at the worst possible time.
I then waited for the sound of the shot, and the sight of the figure on the other side of the room to hit the floor, and get up, extremely angry.
It didn't take very long. In less than ten seconds, as the Lieutenant was heading in the opposite direction, the 'BTOOM' was heard, and he was sent flying into those walking ahead of him, his shield pack coming off in a shower of sparks. As he got up, grabbing his Brokk Hammer from his back, he enveloped himself in a spinning vortex of fire.
I sprayed him from my position with my rifle, not even managing to stagger him, just making myself known to him. He moved faster than any Grineer I'd ever seen, easily crossing the hundred meter or more distance in less than ten seconds.
As he came around to the stairs to the platform, I grabbed my sword, ready to jump down in a whirlwind of destruction, even as his forces began to surround the platform and ping me with rounds from afar.
The instant he got to the main platform, I leapt from the pipe down to the platform, bringing my weight down on top of the sword, causing a physical shockwave to knock over the poor bastards caught in the mayhem. Kril threw a wave of fire at me as he charged, grabbing me bodily with one hand and slamming me to the ground, stomping on me a few times, before being knocked to the side by Loki, having jump kicked him in the side, while still cloaked by his own powers of deception, not that of his Shade.
I scrambled to my feet, redirecting all of the power in my suit from non-critical functions into a single stomp so powerful it caused every single object in the room to be knocked into the air with no meager amount of force behind it. The result sent everything non-Tenno into the air, causing Grineer to be crushed by colliding shipping containers, and sent Kril flying backwards in slow motion.
He was up there for several seconds, and in that space of the he got the business end of Ember's Lanka a few more times, as well as some slices in his leg armor from Loki's Ether Reaper.
I managed to only get one good swing in before he was on the ground again, getting back to his feet, swinging his Brokk around, clearing his immediate vicinity of ourselves. It was only us three in the vicinity; Ember could only hit him once he walked into her line of sight, which wasn't the entire platform, just the sections where the entrance could be seen through the holes in the crates.
As Kril cursed at us, he began rushing at me with his hammer swinging, forcing me to roll to the left, down the flight of stairs leading to the main storage floor. Of course, Nova stayed up where she was, throwing an Antimatter Drop into Kril as he followed me. The explosion from the impact sent the cyborg rocketing out of the platform, where he landed in a heap in front of me, Brokk thrown far, far away from him.
He got to his feet, staring at me, even as Loki came up behind him.
He charged.
I charged.
The resulting sound of suit meeting suit was no doubt resoundingly loud, yet it was all but drowned out by the test of strength going on between us. I attempted to throw him into the abyss, where he would be sucked out into the void of space to die a painful, dishonorable death, but it seemed Kril had the same idea, as he was also trying to force me to fall backwards.
I spoke over the helmet intercom, something I rarely do.
"Nova, just pop him and let Ember get the final shot, he's not going to give an inch, and neither will I."
The sight of Ember coming down the stairs to the floor level in order to have Kril in her sights gave me the relief I needed to continue to fight the massive cyborg for every centimeter of ground on his ship full of Grineer eager to reverently serve under the war hero himself.
When he began to sparkle with the pink glow of the M Prime, I let go and rolled out of the way, grappling a storage crate and putting it between him and myself. The explosion moved the crate a few centimeters, but didn't crush me, thankfully.
The sound of the Lanka was blocked out by the sound of antimatter detonating all over his body, ripping the Grineer Lieutenant apart atom by atom, and leaving nothing but a pile of suspect pink film on the floor.
I scooped up the pile and deposited it into an evidence bag Loki held out for me, while Nova called in our ride.
Ember got to us once we were done, having taken the opportunity to steal some credits out of the nearest storage lockers. Sure, the pay from completion of a task was okay, but there wasn't a rule that said we couldn't get some 'bonus' credits from the hostile faction.
She dropped the small stack she was carrying onto the metallic floor, and we each scanned all of them, watching our totals shoot up in our HUD's.
Thirteen hundred credits, not bad, not bad.
The hole in the middle of the storage platform begin to shake, and the familiar 'vooooosh' sound of the dropship coming near startled me, but only slightly. I followed the rest of the cell to the edge of the platform, and sure enough, the dropship had come up from the bottom of the ship, weaving its' way through the pipes and machinery. Ember jumped the railing first, landing on the roof with a clang that was heard by probably everyone on the ship.
The rest of us jumped when the proximity alerts sounded in the vertical tunnel, so as we fell, red and green alert sirens formed a rave of flashing colors.
I actually rocked the ship slightly as I landed, causing the front end to dip into a scaffold, bringing a hail of construction equipment down around us. We all dove for the entrance hatch, hearing the pings of Grineer ingenuity pelting the ship as we descended into the bowels of the small craft.
Loki placed a Decoy on the roof as he closed the hatch, as we could hear the imitation Sicarus firing on Grineer defense emplacements as we started to descend amidst the burgeoning mayhem.
We were just getting to the safety of open space when something large and heavy dropped onto the ship, tilting the ship heavily as it attempted to compensate for the massive weight.
I sealed my helmet again after having taken the time to relax for a minute as we descended, which was a smart move, seeing as the hatch was ripped off a second later and fire started spewing into the cabin.
Ember and I ran into it, the both of us preventing the fire from engulfing Loki and Nova, and in that short span, Ember fought fire with fire.
She climbed through the pillar of fire and onto the roof, obscured by the flames themselves, and used her nuking technique, Overheat. All I could see from below was Ember shooting several Scorches off into deep space while the fire from within her swooped around, burning the wannabe pyros to a crisp.
She still had to wait for the effect to wear off to climb back down, but in that time she made a temporary hatch out of the helmet of a Scorch. It fit nicely, and she spot welded it in place with a short burst of fire from a single finger.
Settling into the largest seat in the ship, I sighed heavily.
The Kril clone hadn't been holding a chip with any of Frost's program blueprints...we'd have to head back to the station in a few hours' time, once it was confirmed he had been cloned again, to kill him all over again.
Nova snapped her fingers at me, an Orokin Void key covered in vines hovering above her opposite hand.
"Want to spice it up a bit? We don't need Frost today, you know."
Loki and Ember both looked to me, waiting for my answer.
I looked at each of them, knowing my helmet didn't give off any energy coloration changes, making my reaction unreadable.
I nodded, but held up my hand.
"First things first, we're gonna place a dozen Lech Kril statues and koi ponds on the ceiling of the Grand Hall."