Commander Doan Tana sat, watching her best friend in the whole system playing in long grass with a human child. Ind was tromping through the stalks, doing her best to make as much noise as possible while still stepping carefully enough not to risk crushing the grass or hurting the child if she found her. The girl was giving herself away periodically with loud giggles or, more oddly, by yelling at Ind where she was.
"Grineer!" Ind would yell.
"Tenno!" the girl would call back.
Ind shook her head, but she couldn't help smiling. Some of her other soldiers were watching, curious. Most of the others were about their usual business, sleeping and eating and soldiering…
-Soldiering. It's a word. It means doing soldier things. Patrols and cleaning guns and… soldier… stuff.-
-Nothing. I skipped that.-
-Because it was two weeks of painstaking attention to detail while you, Silence, and Doan gathered resources from across the system? How it took you that long to come up with a five-dimensional waveform generator, I'll never know. And the day afterwards, I was telling Gini about it, and he said I could have just salvaged a derelict's entertainment system and the foundry would have practically done the rest! I had to learn how to play the Mandachord! With Ind talking in my ear the whole time!-
-Figurative ear. Anyway, we should have had Belyri go in and get Ind. Would have been simpler for everyone involved.-
-Because Ind was my data.-
-Well, I can't just go handing over my data to other Cephalons all the time. Half of them wouldn't have any idea what they'd gotten their hands on, and wouldn't take good enough care of it if they did.-
-Yes, Belyri's an exception.-
-No, I hated every minute of it. I'd have done anything to get her out more quickly.-
-Don't make me repeat myself. She was my data. I was keeping her safe. I don't know what you're sighing so loudly about, Ind made it back safely. A little better for all the wear, even. We should get our friends trapped in hellish Cephalon mindscapes more often.-
-Well, there are safe ones.-
-She was fine. Came back a bit hungry. And with a better understanding of combat than anyone outside of a Tenno. I even managed to cram some history in there. Not that it seems to have made much difference.-
-That's why I'm skipping ahead, because it's a long and boring story and everything turned out like how I'd be describing if you didn't keep interrupting.-
Alright, Ind playing with a child, most of the squad on patrol, Doan watching mostly because her friend was a little bit dead a month ago… that all sounds about right. No need to mention the nearby villages or the size of the base. Nobody cares. Now, what is important is that this little girl had been visiting every day for almost a week at this point, and had started visiting once in a while since the very first day Doan and Ind got back to their little outpost. Yes, a human child wandering onto a Grineer base was just as dangerous as it sounds. I have it on good authority that she went on a dare. Which she made, to her friend, so she would have an excuse to do something stupid.
It was very in-character for her.
Having successfully endeared herself to Ind in short order, the girl not been taken into slavery by the Grineer, and instead been allowed to return home that first day.
Doan was actually grateful. As a base Commander, she had a certain image to uphold, one which generally didn't include playing tag with subordinates. When Ind came back, Doan had wanted nothing more than to spend time together, but she hadn't had any time for that. Getting dragged away for reports and discipline and training all meant Ind was left alone. Except, she wasn't. Ind had a human to spend time with, somebody less habitually angry than the usual Grineer.
So, strange-looking or not, Doan let the child keep visiting, and that day she got to watch the pair play together.
-Yes, strange-looking. By the way, how is that new Clan going?-
-And they're getting along?-
-Well, it could be worse.-
-You could be trying to rein in a hundred bored killing machines, like some of the clans. Eight is just fine, Secret, it really is. It's a start, and having any Tenno willing to spend time with Grineer or Corpus is a victory, to say nothing of the reciprocal. Be proud.-
While Doan was watching her friend and the rest of the base was mostly relaxing, a thing occurred which proved she really needed to rearrange a few of the patrols.
"They're having a lot of fun."
A child spoke.
Doan blinked first, then looked down to her right.
There sat a scrawny boy with tousled black hair reaching almost to his shoulders. He was so scrawny, in fact, and had such long hair, that Doan wasn't quite sure she'd heard right. Maybe it was another girl. But his voice had definitely been the sort a boy has just when it starts to be obvious he's a boy. That was Doan's conclusion, given her limited experience with humans and children.
"I know," the boy said in a tone as resigned as anything else, "I shouldn't be here. But she came. She comes all the time. Why shouldn't I get to? It's no fair if she gets to play with you while I have to do chores all the time."
Doan stared down at the boy, convinced that if she looked at him long enough, he'd figure out he was sitting beside a cyborg super soldier from an army of cranky slavers.
She was wrong. The boy just sat there, watching his friend play, kicking his feet and drumming his heels against the grassy embankment.
"How long will you be here?" he asked. "It's nice here. You should stay. I bet we could catch a pet Kuaka. Or a Kavat."
Doan kept staring, the boy kept ignoring her, and she decided to change tactics. That usually caught people off guard, especially those who had spent a lot of time around Grineer.
"I can't tell you that. It would make me a bad soldier."
"The others would tell me."
"Not if I tell them not to."
"Even Ind?" The boy pointed, making clear something that Doan found a little alarming: he could tell them apart. Sure, the fact that Ind was the fun one, playing with the girl, was more than enough clue for many people, but most of those would have met Grineer before. "I think if we asked Ind, she'd tell us."
"And you'd understand her?" Doan asked. She'd crossed her arms without even realizing, and was glaring down at the kid when she realized something. "You're speaking Grineer."
The boy laughed and pointed to where Ind and the girl were... "bantering". Doan noticed, now, that both the children had musical accents, lilting voices that made even the Grineer language sound almost artistic.
"She speaks Grineer, too."
"She," Doan said, slow as if she were talking to another Grineer, "says Grineer words. Sometimes I think she learned all her words from Ind just this month. You are speaking Grineer."
Doan can be very hard to fool.
"Do you want to learn my language instead?"
She was, however, sometimes easily distracted.
"Yes. Wait-"
"Good! Then we can start with combat words. That way you always have words you know to compare to."
"But you're-"
"Something like 'get them!' or 'Tenno scum!'"
"Tenno scum!" Ind and the girl echoed helpfully, before descending into giggles.
The whole thing was giving Doan a feeling of deja vu. Being dragged along on somebody else's whim with no real idea how to make them stop made sense with a Tenno, at least. With a young human boy, it was just embarrassing.
"You're lucky I don't have both of you shot," she said, though it was more petulant than threatening. Even she admits it.
Worse, it just made the boy laugh.
"No, I'm not. Your Grineer never shoot people they don't have to. They've never shot anyone around here." When she gave him a skeptical look, he added, "everybody talks about it. You're lucky the big Grineer don't know."
The big Grineer in question being Doan Tana's direct superiors, who had a habit of disappearing along with their less-than-stellar reports about the violence Doan's outpost was not causing and the slaves she was not taking. There had been a bit of a Darwinistic progression until a Grineer was put in charge who understood the benefit of quietly productive mining operations. The outpost was, in fact, happily ignored by two nearby villages.
It is safe to say most Grineer settlements cannot be safely, let alone happily, ignored.
"You walked in here."
"Only after my friend did."
The boy had her there. Doan could repeat what she'd said before, that the girl was lucky to be alive, but she'd shown up the day of Ind's return, when Doan was in such a good mood she probably would have given up her Sonicor if a subordinate had asked nicely enough. Then her soldiers had quickly gotten used to the girl and Doan had concluded she wasn't a spy, and the girl had made a point of coming and going as she pleased.
That made the boy walking into a Grineer outpost and sitting down right beside the base commander sound almost sane.
-Right now?-
-Alright, yes, I can multitask.-
-That is bad. And the others understand she's not one of them anymore?-
-Give me the details, I'll switch to subvocal recording.-
So, the young boy successfully outwitted the cleverer-than-average Grineer, thereby firmly establishing a hierarchy of the System with Cephalons at the top and your average Grineer somewhere below certain children and above most kubrows. This put him in a perfect position to take the initiative, while his friend got into an impromptu wrestling match with the nearly three-meter-tall armoured supersoldier.
"Why are you so nice?"
-That does sound bad. But she's trying hard?-
-Then why not team up with her? Like you do with Silence.-
-Because you're the leader and it matters who you spend time with.-
-Yes, really.-
-I'm letting you figure that out. Brainstorm at me.-
I swear, great leaders these days.
Doan Tana, of course, did not exactly think of herself as nice. She, like most Grineer, thought of herself as a rightful ruler of the System, who would eventually drive back the enemies of the Empire and stand as the iron fist of the Queens. Queen.
Her words, not mine.
"Nice?"
"Yeah. Why are you nice? Did you learn, or were you always nice? Are all Grineer secretly nice? Like Ind?"
He emphasized the point by pointing at Ind, who was losing her wrestling match with the human girl. Not actually losing, obviously, since Grineer universally have the strength to do unspeakable things to a flesh-and-blood body, but definitely making a show of losing the fight. There was dramatic wailing and cries of, "Tenno scum," and, "for the Lotus!" By all accounts, a fun time. It also served to prove the boy's point very well.
Which left Doan Tana in the position of having to acknowledge that, yes, Ind was nice. And Doan liked Ind, mostly because she was nice.
And because she thinks Ind is clever, but we'll not be getting into kind delusions in this semi-historical recording.
-That's a good one. People don't like being preached at. If you work with her enough, get to know who she is, you can probably figure out why she went over to them in the first place without asking directly.-
-That's why you have me.-
"No," she said, after some thought. "Not all Grineer are nice. Most Grineer are mean. My Grineer are loyal. They do what I say."
"And you're nice."
"...and I… am nice," Doan said, like it was admitting to something.
The boy nodded, like he'd proven a great and powerful philosophical point. And, in a way, he had. He'd proven, in a lot of ways, that Doan Tana was not like other Grineer. In ways she couldn't yet describe or understand, she was kinder than most other Grineer. Not exactly less prone to anger or frustration, though access to a couple of Orokin-level cybernetics certainly helped with the usual aches and pains that caused general Grineer grumpiness, but more able to control it, more able to understand why controlling it was the best choice.
Doan Tana was smarter than the average Grineer. She was also kinder than the average Grineer. In some ways those were related. In other ways…
She looked down and met the boy's eyes. Properly looked at him for the first time. Skinny. Scrawny, even. He looked like he'd been sick lately and gotten better, and his cheeks and skin were still sunken and a little grey. His hair didn't quite hang right, though she couldn't put her finger on why. She wasn't very good with faces, not having spent much time around anyone who didn't wear a helmet every minute of every day, but he seemed happy, not quite smiling, but ready to.
And his eyes. His eyes didn't feel real. She looked at them, and they were silver. Or clear. Or a thousand colours. Or none and somehow that wasn't the same as clear.
-I'm just at the good part and really regretting going to subvocal mode.-
-Who?-
-No, I heard, just… really? That can't be right.-
-Alright, go, just don't get killed or anything. And good luck.-
The good part.
Doan tried to gather her thoughts, though even later she wasn't sure what she would have said. Not many things she could have said that wouldn't have given everything away. Nothing she could have said that even she would believe.
The boy gave a mischievous smile. Then he sprang to his feet, called out, "time to go!" and ran to join the girl. The girl stopped pointlessly beating up on Ind's helmet and joined the boy, running away and laughing.
Just before they got out of sight, they both turned around. Doan couldn't see them properly, but she looked over at Ind, who had much better eyesight.
Ind was leaning forward, one hand in her knee, the other to her faceplate, with one finger over her mouth piece.
Doan looked back at the children, but they were gone.
"Tenno scum," she said, and she insists she said it fondly.