Inspired by a conversation with SoulStealer1987 over on AO3, in which we agreed that Baro Ki'Teer is basically Warframe's version of Indiana Jones, quote "messing around in the Void like the fearless, occasionally endearing prick that he is" unquote. Her perfect words, not mine. And if you give a mouse a cookie…
*maniacal laughter from atop a pile of skulls*
Ahem. This episode started out as a silly crack revolving around that classic scene with the golden idol – and ended at over 12,000 words, my longest memory fragment to date. I honestly can't tell you how much fun I've been having with these! Enjoy the descent into madness and remember: comments and reviews are greatly appreciated. Set after Son of the Sun and during/after The Chains of Harrow. Don't forget to visit my DeviantArt for a new illustration!
Spoilers
The Chains of Harrow – MAJOR!
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"We have not done engine diagnostics since yesterday," Cephalon Glitz declared morbidly. "I recommend we do so now, before we suffer a catastrophic failure that destroys this craft and renders its occupant lifeless."
Baro Ki'Teer swept himself into the pilots' chair, a faint smirk curled at the corners of his lips.
"Oh, my! Well, we have a schedule to keep, so we'll just have to chance it," he said, tapping at the console with one manicured hand. Screens flashed, nav systems came online, and the scimitar's engines powered up with a well-tuned hum – potential explosions notwithstanding. Reaching overhead, Baro snapped a series of toggles into new positions.
"Nefer'Tem, you are cleared to depart," said a voice on the comm. "Proceed to departure lane 3."
"As you say, Strata Relay," Baro responded lightly, watching the hanger rotate into view as the scimitar eased around, docking clamps demagnetizing with a series of weighty clunks that could be felt throughout the ship. There was a microsecond of drift before the ship's Cephalon engaged her piloting precepts.
"There is a 2% chance we will suffer a hull breach today."
"Perhaps," said Baro as he brought up the star chart.
"Or an irreparable breakdown of life support systems."
"That is a possibility," Baro agreed, flicking through the system with his finger.
Earth shrank and fell away, followed by Lua and the restless sands of Mars. Baro smoothly pinched his thumb and forefinger together, widening the scopes past Phobos and focusing on a spot deep within the belt, where he input a string of coordinates. The scimitar banked, clearing the hanger and opening its starboard flaps to arc them away from the approach lanes. Baro toggled another series of switches, then reclined in his chair and took a sip from his vacuum flask, savoring the rich, caramel taste of kopi luwak.
With production limited to only a few small clades that farmed the lethal edges of the Eurasian rainforest, a single pound of the roasted, fermented beans could easily fetch 500 credits or more in Ostron's expansive floating marketplaces. Corpus attempts to replicate the unique process in their tropical greenhouses and sweaty, Venusian bio-domes had produced a variety of cheap imitations with a much greater margin for profit, but nothing compared to the true taste of kopi luwak, or that pleasing, mellow acidity made by roasting mere handfuls in scalding-hot iron pans.
Baro took another long sip, lulled by the comfortable vibration of the wyrm drive as Glitz piloted them towards Mars. She banked again, avoiding the knot of traffic queuing for nearby rail, and the motion sent a flash of sunlight slicing across the Nefer'Tem's bladed wings, the ship's prisma coating creating a dazzling cascade of iridescent, blue-green refractions that followed the ship into the black. Baro hid a smirk, aware that he'd been noticed, and glad of the fact.
Despite his lucrative business, he had no need to worry about being followed; prisma crystal was good for more than just ornamentation. It had a convenient tendency to bounce sensor-sweeps in a dozen different directions, making the Nefer'Tem seem like a mote of ionized gas or a localized fissure in the Void. Anything but a ship. And certainly not his ship, as Baro typically deactivated his ID beacon once he was beyond the rim of civilized space. Potential stalkers would have to get within visual range in order to track him, and Glitz's superior instrumentation would prevent that from happening, or at least warn him he was being shadowed.
"What is our destination?" Glitz asked glumly.
"Site 4," said Baro, crossing his legs and propping his ankle on the opposite knee.
He'd picked the Orokin tower up on deep scans about three days ago. Located roughly five klicks galactic north of Mot, the structure had not been marked on any of the charts Baro possessed, nor had its current location been predicted by the pattern of other nearby towers. It was alone in an empty region of the Void, likely displaced from its original location sometime in antiquity and kept hidden by the region's unusually active storms. As far as Baro knew, Site 4 – as he'd previously labeled it – was unexplored and untouched. He licked his lips in anticipation.
The tower was a rare find, even for him, and well-worth the scramble to rejigger his schedule. The timetable was much sooner than he normally allowed, having just returned from his usual Void safari, but there was a sense of urgency that Baro simply couldn't ignore. The tower had appeared suddenly, and could disappear just as quick. The thought of losing such a pristine claim had given him indigestion for days.
With the Origin System's increased interest in the Void, he'd often been compelled to go over a site that'd been picked clean by some other faction. Much as Baro loathed sloppy seconds, there was always more to find, some secret alcove or hidden artifact those inept fools didn't have the knowledge to uncover, but there was no challenge in it, no thrill of being the first to walk some shadowed hall since the Orokin had abandoned it a millennia ago. And there were other caveats, besides. Arriving late to the party meant that all of the best hors d'oeuvres had already been wolfed down, stashed in some secret Corpus lab or, in the case of the Grineer, melted down for their base components.
Baro suppressed a shudder.
He was going to pull some valuable finds on this trip, of that Baro was certain. And the timing couldn't have been better. While he'd never lacked for customers, per se, business was positively booming ever since the Tenno had awakened from their slumber, all of them hungry for relics and technology of the era they'd left behind. And they didn't just window shop. They paid handsomely. Even his rarest items had been flying off the shelves almost as soon as he acquired them, particularly the data packets and combat precepts the Tenno used to modify their Warframes. Over time, Baro had even acquired a short list of requests – he refused to think of them as order forms, as it made the transaction sound so insipidly trite – to keep his eyes open for specific treasures.
Mars slipped past to starboard, the last bastion of civilized space for over 500 million kilometers. Darkness closed around the Nefer'Tem. Save for the rattletraps crewed by pirates, few ships traveled the belt, especially not with the intent to reach the Jovian planets on the other side, but Baro had another destination in mind, one that he marked on no charts, and stored only in his own thoughts. Even Glitz had been programmed to delete the location from her memory banks after every excursion. Baro sat up and wrapped his fingers around the control yoke, settling his boots on the pedals. He always preferred to pilot during this leg.
"Engage manual override," he said aloud.
"This will result in a 19.2% decrease in overall ship's safety."
Baro answered with a noncommittal hum. He pushed the yoke forward, lowering the scimitar's rear elevators and moving the ship along a downward vector, watching the instrumentation that measured his position in relation to the galactic plane. With the exception of the odd Void Gate located in some overgrown, mutant pocket of jungle, the system's warring factions were acquainted with only four main entrances into the Void: the one just outside the orbit of Phobos, the one tucked into the mass shadow of Europa, and the twin gateways lined up between Neptune and dark, distant Sedna.
But the fabric of space-time was flexible, and like any fabric it warped and rippled and acquired small tears, little cracks in reality. There were other ways into the Void – and Baro Ki'Teer kept his own catalog of backdoors.
He leaned one foot into the pedals and opened the Nefer'Tem's thrusters, moving his hand to a small toggle switch mounted directly overhead. He snapped it open and the ship's Void Key came online with an arcane hum, encasing the hull in a wedge of dark energy that would allow him to pierce the nearby fissure. Baro felt his limbs fuzz as though his entire body had momentarily gone to sleep. The feeling was not entirely comfortable, but not wholly unpleasant, either.
"There is a .7% probability that this jump will fail."
Baro heaved a sigh. "Maintenance Note," he said. "On returning to the Relay, remind me to adjust your charming personality with something, shall we say, a little sunnier?"
"To date, you've made approximately 32 such logs."
"Are you implying that I, Baro Ki'Teer, am procrastinating? How rude. I am always prompt!"
"I am implying that you need my capacity as ship's Cephalon."
"Mm-hmm. That capacity need not include your persistent gloom and doom."
"I am not gloomy," Glitz responded matter-of-factly. "I am not programmed for such an emotion and am merely stating facts. You do not seem to grasp the dangers of Void-travel and would surely have expired without me."
"Glitz, your lack of confidence in me is positively depressing!" said Baro, amused.
The alien darkness of the Void grew stronger, closer, prying his neural pathways open like a tendril of thorns. Well-used to the sensation, Baro tilted his head back against the pilot's chair. He was not Tenno, but the Void had left its mark on him, filling his mind with glowing filaments of scar tissue, not unlike the crystalline trees of which the Orokin had been so fond.
"Five seconds to Void Jump. Four… three… two… one."
The Nefer'Tem surged forward and was gone, leaving only a trail of sparks.
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Baro flew cautious circles around the watchtower, sweeping it with every sensor beam his ship possessed, but even then, the data he could gather on the structure was slim. Little made sense in the Void. Scanners showed rooms that'd never been built, radar shadows that didn't exist, and often reported empty space where Baro could clearly see a physical structure. Several instruments had calculated dimensions so insane that the computer didn't even possess the numbers to explain it, indicating that the tower was simultaneously both non-existent and as large as the infinite universe.
Baro was not concerned. Long years of practice had taught him to read the distortions.
His fingers waltzed across the console, often pressing multiple buttons at once.
"Atmospheric readings are within breathable standard, Mr. Ki'Teer."
Baro nodded to himself. The day was proceeding as expected. He swung the Nefer'Tem around and slowed thrusters, angling them for approach. Unlike the glorious Lisets used by the Tenno, the scimitar was not Orokin-made and did not include a revolving docking cradle on the underside of the ship. As such, Baro was compelled to use the tower's cavernous launch bay. He set the Nefer'Tem down in the exact center of it and began powering down his engines, keeping watch through the viewscreen. When his arrival appeared to have gone unnoticed, Baro slid from the pilot's seat and left the bridge.
Most of the rear cabin was taken up by stacks of empty plastic crates and bags of kinetic packing gel, all of it secured to the sides of the craft by webs of nylon cargo straps. Aside from that, however, the cabin was lushly appointed, sporting several hand-woven rugs and rare ayatan sculptures that scintillated in the light. The smell of incense hung in the air, a blend of finely ground herbs and the purest, most luxurious of resins and oils. Baro inhaled appreciatively as he made his way to the folded Osprey unit hovering at the very back of the cabin, right next to the shuttered weapon's locker.
"Power on and begin diagnostics," he ordered, rapping it with his knuckle.
The Osprey obediently unfurled its wings, rotors whirring as it processed the command. Baro opened the locker and reached in for his equipment, already shedding his bulky attire. Being of average height, neither strikingly tall nor short, and of relatively slim build, he used the heavy ensemble to project an aura of power and importance, but it was impractical for the upcoming task at hand, and Baro Ki'Teer preferred to remain amongst the living – not lumbering frantically down the corridor while something unsavory chased him back to his ship.
Choosing a garment not dissimilar to the padded glove-suits worn by Tenno operatives and syndicate agents, Baro tightened the series of straps and hidden zippers, and smoothed the skintight collar until it lay more easily. The helmet he would keep; it was his signature piece, after all.
There was a distant rumble, so deep it was almost ultrasonic, and the scimitar shuddered from cockpit to stern, hard enough to shiver the various artifacts Baro had artfully scattered about. He put his hand on the wall.
"Glitz?" he questioned firmly.
"Unusual disturbances in the Void," the Cephalon reported. "Local currents appear to be unstable. I have just clocked them at over 50 kilometers per hour. Sir, I take the opportunity to remind you that this tower is partially submerged in an energy ribbon. If the Pendula registers even a 15.4% decrease in output, it may sink even deeper."
Except for the smattering of dangerous magnatars and other infinitely dense, infinitely bright neutron stars, the Void contained no indigenous solid matter. It was a place of gas and dust, ablaze with fluid whorls of energy that swirled through the abyss like a comic oil slick. Even light behaved like an aberrant thing, lensing around gravitational anomalies that simply did not exist, save for the force they exerted on the space around them. These pockets of contortion occasionally grew so dense that an onlooker could see straight through the dimension itself and peer at distorted reflections on the other side. Planets, ships. Smears of unrecognizable color. They would move and shift and, more often than not, snap as the electromagnetic fields knotted back on themselves, creating unpredictable currents of ionically charged particles that could sweep objects hundreds of lightyears from their original location. Or tear said object in half.
Baro waited, but the shudder did not happen again. He took his hand from wall.
"Monitor the area and keep me informed," he said, attaching a holster his lower back.
"Acknowledged. Why do you insist on subjecting yourself to such apparent danger?"
"Why, the ducats of course!" Baro exclaimed. He reached back into the locker to remove his Lex and a fully loaded magazine, his many rings clicking against them. "See if you can't connect to the tower's systems. A manifest would be most helpful."
There was a long moment of silence.
"I believe I have finally made a diagnosis on you," Glitz informed him gravely, as if she were about to inform him of stage 4 rectal cancer. "You, Baro Ki'Teer, are a materialist."
Baro's pealing laughter echoed off the walls.
He chambered the first round with a snap.
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The launch bay itself was one of the largest the Void Trader had ever encountered, its luxury rivaled only by the massive crystal trees that had spent a millennia doing their damnedest to reach the vaulted contours of the ceiling. Despite centuries of neglect, the tower's basic systems, including life support, atmospheric processing, and ambient lighting appeared virtually intact. If nothing else, the Orokin built for the eternity they'd expected to receive.
After thoroughly combing the launch bay, Baro moved into the outer corridors, tapping his heels to a selection of music he'd programmed into his Osprey unit. As always, the watchtower showed no signs of its previous occupants – or their hasty exodus. No blood, no bodies. No remains of any kind. And that suited Baro just fine. Humming to himself, he climbed a set of stairs and entered the galley at the top. The wide-open space was full of circular tables and low, cushioned chairs accompanied by more crystalline trees, their eerie, skeletal branches glowing in the light of the overhead atrium. As Baro probed deeper into the room, a shadow fluttered across the floor. He tipped his head back to the look at the ceiling.
Nearly a fifteen meters above, several interlocking rings, each wider than he was tall, orbited around each other, creating a hypnotic pattern of motion that glistened in the atrium's light. Baro smirked.
"If only I could somehow retrieve that," he lamented, thinking of several Corpus executives who would give their left nut and then some for such a relic, especially after he'd enticed them into a bidding war. Because nothing said "authority" than an over-sized Orokin ayatan in your corporate lobby.
"If you brought a bigger ship, perhaps a Stanchion cruiser, your average haul capacity would increase by 70%," Glitz suggested via commlink. She was mocking him, and the Void Trader knew it.
"I don't think you could handle a bigger ship," Baro responded cheerily, moving across the gallery.
Static buzzed in his ear.
"My capacity for piloting far exceeds yours, Mr. Ki'Teer," she reminded him tartly.
"You don't say?"
"I do say. It is you who chooses to ignore facts."
Boot heels clicking against the glossy floor, Baro entered a smaller side room. There was no mistaking the accoutrements of a kitchen, even an Orokin one. He opened a cupboard and felt his dagger-like smile grow wider. He beckoned for the Osprey to set the crate it was carrying on the floor.
Whipping on a pair of soft white gloves, Baro gently removed a tall, slender-necked bottle from the cupboard and held it up to the light. Made of traditional Orokin bone ceramic, so thin he could detect the shadow of his hand, the piece had been deliberately broken and joined back together with golden lacquer, creating a fluid, almost organic web of cracks and softly rounded seams. Baro caressed the lip of the bottle with his finger. There was a set of matching cups, each holding no more than a mouthful.
"Late Orokin Void-era," he commented softly. "Exquisite."
There was more in the cupboard. Much, much more.
Baro's lustful eyes traveled the gleaming stacks, lingering on every bowl, cup and plate. Judging by the number, the kitchen had been meant to service 25, maybe 30 people on a given day. And to think such a magnificent set had once been considered merely utilitarian, fit only for serving breakfast in a public commissary. Baro moistened his plush lips with his tongue.
It was time to make an inventory. He knelt on the gleaming floor, music pulsing against the walls, and wrapped each piece in its own individual square of parchment before lining them up in the bottom of the crate, a thick layer of packing gel between each one. Everything was in pristine condition and he intended them to stay that way. Maybe he'd keep a set for himself.
It took him a minute to notice the sound, a gentle, rap, tap, tapping in the far distance.
"Hmmm?"
Baro straightened from his work, moving to glance over one shoulder. Part of the galley was visible through the open doorway, but nothing stirred besides the fluttering shadows of the rings. Baro pressed one hand to his gauntlet. The music wasn't loud, but he turned it down anyway, listening for anything abnormal. A moment passed, then another, but the odd tapping noise did not reappear. Baro heard nothing except the steady exhaust of the Osprey's rotors. Still, there was no such thing as being too cautious in the Void – and Baro was uncomfortably reminded of the faint, dangerous little pings of a hull about to breach.
He touched the strap of his satchel just to reassure himself that he'd brought it. Aside from a heavily padded interior and numerous zippered pockets rattling with lotions and lip balms, the luxury satchel also contained an emergency breather mask and shield emitter. Enough to survive hard vacuum for a little less than ten minutes.
Satisfied that nothing was amiss, Baro resumed what he'd been doing, casually sliding the music back up to its original volume. The sound returned in the distance, softly at first, then more pronounced as time went on, but it existed on a level below normal notice, like breathing or blinking, and this time the Void Trader didn't register he was hearing anything at all.
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When Baro had packed everything in the kitchen, he checked the gallery one last time, brought the crate back to the Nefer'Tem, and headed back out, mapping his route into his own personal data HUD. Despite every attempt to modify his equipment, there were always staircases, cubbyholes, and eldritch switchbacks that didn't appear on scans, and Baro was nothing if not meticulous. Osprey at his elbow, he moved higher into the tower, passing through several massive halls and narrow, hairpin corridors. The former had been complete devoid of anything useful. The latter led him to an enormous citadel larger than the Larunda concourse.
Without crossing the threshold, Baro took a glance around. The tower's expansive networks of outlying corridors, including nonessential rooms, were rarely watched by surveillance, but that lackadaisical security did not extend very far. About five meters ahead of him was a short staircase flanked on either side by a pair of Orokin drones, each barely distinguishable from the architecture itself. Baro put his hand on the control panel alongside the door. There was a melodic chime. Without taking his eyes off the drones, Baro carefully rotated the cipher into the correct position. There was another chime. The quad of lights mounted in the center of each drone went from turquoise to a deep, dangerous red. Baro's lip curled. His fingers moved a little faster.
"15 seconds before the system detects an intrusion," said Glitz. "I suggest you hurry."
Baro made no reply. Placed in strategic locations about the tower, the drones were linked to the automated defense system, the Arogya Medica or "Neural Sentry", as it was colloquially known. Of all the dangers he faced in the Void, Baro liked that one least of all. The drones would launch first, their fiendish speed, heavy shielding and barrage of small-arms fires more than enough to keep potential intruders from recognizing the real danger. It started as a malevolent whisper at the back of the brain, an ultrasonic hum gone unheard by the ear, but felt like a cloud of static that itched and scraped and burrowed, until your thoughts were no longer your own. By the time the Medica's flying apparatus had attached to the intruder's face, they were usually too far gone to feel the filaments worming around their eyes and fusing to the tender, vulnerable nerves located at the front of the brain.
Usually, but not always.
The Neural Sentry could, and often did, take its victims by force.
"8 seconds."
The panel gave a third chime and collapsed. The gleam of crimson light went dark.
"You wound me," Baro scolded, letting his hand fall. "Have a little faith in my abilities!"
"What you call "faith" is merely an illogical belief in receiving a favorable outcome," Glitz responded. "I am therefore unable to view your actions in any manner that incorrectly represents your chances of survival."
"Glitz, you are positively dismal."
"And you have just decreased your odds by a further 2.4%"
Baro swirled his flask and took a frothy sip of kahve, his gaze traveling around the cavernous space. Instinct told him he was the verge of something valuable – and anything valuable to the Orokin was bound to be guarded by more than just a simple pair of drones, Neural Sentry or no. He took a second, much deeper sip, partially hoping the caffeine would see to the annoying twinge of a developing headache, and set the flask on the rim of a nearby planter before advancing through the door one careful step at a time. At the top of the stairs, the Void Trader paused again, his keen eyes sweeping the walls and counting each of gleaming, golden discs set innocuously into the seams between the panels. The room also contained several large orbs.
"Oh, come now," Baro laughed softly. "You can do better than that."
There was an alcove at the far end of the room, framed by two curved reflecting pools and a phalanx of crystal trees. Baro crept closer, watching his footing. Pretentious as they were, the Orokin were not above basic pitfall traps, and it wouldn't be the first time a section of floor had just collapsed beneath him. He stayed close to the balustrade, eyes constantly in motion. In additional to a handful of Orokin-era supply caches, the alcove also contained a circular dais displayed in a shaft of glistening, marzipan light. Baro's clever hands twitched with excitement. Atop the dais was an ayatan sculpture.
The Void Trader took a deep breath. The ostentatious placement of the sculpture indicated that it was meant to irresistible. Why blight the architecture with bars and heavy doors when a honeyed Lunar Pitcher looked so much better? Baro cautiously made his way into the alcove, stepping only where he'd confirmed it was safe to do so, until he stood directly in front of the dais. Without touching it or the ayatan, Baro lowered himself into a crouch until the sculpture was at eye-level, so close he could hear the gentle whir of its sprockets.
Beautiful," he murmured, gazing at it. "Beyond compare."
A magnificent example of the Orokin aesthetic, Orta-class ayatan were among the system's rarest – receptacles of harmony and sound, astonishing compositions played on instruments long forgotten, the music of the cosmos brought to life.
After a lengthy purview of their data, Baro typically sold any ayatans he came across to the hermits that inhabited the backalleys of Cetus, but in recent years, the Tenno had been anxious to pay more. Far more than the Corpus researchers plying at the Void Trader's biweekly kiosk. Inventory was dispensed on a first come, first serve basis – and Baro Ki'Teer had a preferred customer list.
He eyed the raised, golden surface of the dais.
The trap was an obvious one. Lift the sculpture, and the now-empty pressure plate would activate the room's deadly security apparatus. Baro rubbed thoughtfully at his chin. Ortas were the smallest of the ayatan family and very, very light. It wouldn't take much to disturb the mechanism; a discrepancy of even a few ounces would be enough. Tapping one finger against the corner of his mouth, Baro considered his options. Linked to an insulted sub-circuit that ran beneath the floor, the dais itself wasn't easily deactivated. He could leave the room and return with more specialized tools, but it would mean giving the Neural Sentry time to rearm. That was a mistake that'd cost many a Corpus salvage team their lives. Self-sustaining and intelligent, the Medica system would inevitably change the cipher he'd used and encode it at a much greater level of security, leaving him an uncomfortably narrow margin for error.
"Whatever you're about to do, I advise against it," said Glitz.
"Hush," said Baro, moving to pick up a lump of argon from the nearby locker.
He lobbed the exotic mineral between his hands for a moment, testing its weight, and then moved closer to the ayatan, carefully pinching its delicate upper halo. He took a deep breath, then held it as he inched the mineral ingot onto the pressure plate while simultaneously sliding the ayatan off the other side. After a long moment, the sculpture was safely in Baro's hand. His other nervously hovered over the argon, waiting to see if the mechanism had been fooled by the switch. Thirty seconds passed before he decided it had. Baro released the breath he'd been holding and grinned, holding the ayatan up for examination.
"Well, this will certainly be appreciated," the Void Trader gloated, thinking of a flock of seagulls crowding about for a morsel. He knew full-well that traffic on the Relays increased by a significant margin whenever he was paying it a visit.
The brief spike of adrenaline certainly hadn't helped the growing discomfort in his temple, however. Now it had spread to encompass his right eye in a dull, vice-like grip. Baro rubbed at the area with two fingers, unable to do much through the leather cowl of his helmet.
Something dark moved out of his peripheral, glimpsed between the softness of his fingers. With a cold jolt of alarm, Baro instinctively twisted to follow it, aware that nothing besides him should be moving in the empty room. Half a second later, he found himself staring at his own reflection in the cupola of golden mirrors that wallpapered the alcove, one hand irritably pressed to his temple, the other curled protectively around the fluttering ayatan. Nothing appeared amiss-
-until the mirror smiled a familiar, dagger-like smile.
A golden shaft of energy abruptly cut across Baro's line of sight.
With a startled yelp, the Void Trader dropped into a crouch just as an Orokin laser sliced overhead, passing through the empty space his throat had occupied not a moment before. The rest of the laser plates came on with a crackle.
Shit.
Baro sprang out of the alcove, narrowly missing the next laser and sent spinning on his heel by another. They weren't especially fast, but they were numerous and disorienting, all of them rotating in opposite directions from each other. In two quick, smooth motions, Baro spun through a gap in the next circuit, then went prone to avoid the second. He was in decent physical condition, a fact he cultivated and maintained for exactly this purpose – and even so, he barely avoided losing his leg at the knee.
Spitting a curse, Baro planted his foot against a nearby locker and tipped it over, preventing two of the lasers from reaching him. He rolled through the breach and scrambled past the reflecting pools on all fours, ayatan clutched to his chest. There was a weighty clunk from the other side of the room. Baro looked up see the heavy door slowly coming to life.
"You must reach the exit before it closes."
He never would have guessed.
Baro sprinted across the room, ducking and weaving through the murderous web. More laser plates were coming online, including the smattering of orbs spaced around the chamber. The door was only a meter above the floor. Taking the stairs in the single leap, Baro threw himself into a slide, furnishing himself with the perfect view of the array sparking to life on the ceiling. Glossy leather against smooth tile, he shot beneath the door and skated into the outer corridor just as the last few plates came fully online, dropping a gate of lasers just in front of the threshold. With a clatter of Orokin gears, the door locked shut behind him.
Baro flopped against the tiles, staring at the vaulted ceiling above. The ache in his temple had exploded to full-blown throbbing, pulsing to the frenetic beat of his heart. He dropped his head back with a grimace, happy to remain spread-eagled on the floor. The ayatan fluttered weakly against his palm. He lifted it up to look at it. It hadn't been the pressure-plate; if he'd triggered the mechanism, the trap would have armed immediately.
"Glitz," he panted. "Care to explain?"
"I have run diagnostic regressions on local systems," the female Cephalon told him. "There appears to have been a minor decrease in power at the moment of activation. I also detected another tremor in the local current. Pendula are registering approximately 1.3% less output than before."
His heart-rate slowing, Baro attempted to follow that information to its inevitable conclusion. He hadn't felt a tremor, but the treasure room was better insulated than the outlying launch bay. It must have upset the delicate balance of the pressure-plate, he concluded. If he hadn't turned around when he did, the laser might've sliced through the back of his neck. As for his smirking reflection, Void Sickness was a well-documented symptom of exposure to that alien domain, resulting in anything from minor confusion and disorientation, to full-blown audiovisual hallucinations and dangerous levels of paranoia. The Orokin had called it the "realm that watches". The Grineer had a more descriptive moniker that Baro refused to dirty his tongue with.
Either way, he was surprised the Void's adverse effects were setting in so soon. He'd developed a resistance to them over many years, and learned to gauge when it'd built up to levels that might impede his reason. He turned his wrist over and held it above his face. The numbers on his chrono read a little over six hours, less than half the time he normally allotted for personal safety. Baro rapped the bezel with one glitter-varnished fingernail.
"Time since my arrival?" he questioned aloud.
"Six hours, fifteen minutes, forty-six seconds, Mr. Ki'Teer."
The chrono wasn't malfunctioning, then. It was possible that the tower sat in an unusually strong pocket of Void energy, thus the increased timetable of symptoms. Baro slowly sat up. Setting the ayatan on the floor, he reached up to adjust his helmet, but as his questing fingers moved up the back of it, he felt a sharp, machined edge where there should have been a decorative ornament. His mouth puckered into a frown. That was how close he'd come to that last array, apparently.
He gingerly climbed to his feet and was glad his satchel hadn't been loaded with anything valuable, seeing as he'd all but fallen on top of it. A greater cause for concern was the fact that the tower's Pendulas seemed to be malfunctioning, or at least trying to compensation for erratic changes in the Void. Baro now knew why the tower had suddenly been visible to scans. The storm hadn't cleared; the tower had risen out of it, either in response to a system-wide glitch or as an act of self-preservation. As Glitz had already inferred, however, the whole structure could easily sink back down before he'd had a chance to thoroughly explore it, reemerging anywhere from next month to never. Baro made a sour face. If the ayatan was any indication, he'd be giving up on a treasure trove.
"Glitz, go over the tower's schematics and mark all routes to the personnel cabins," Baro ordered, tucking the ayatan into his satchel. A vial of painkillers rattled in the side pocket. He unzipped it and washed several of the vibrant green pills down with a swig of kahve. It'd gone unpleasantly cold.
The sound of the Void continued to pulse, unheard by the conscious mind, but lodged itself in the subconscious like a sliver of glass. Something echoed in the distance – something suspiciously like laughter – and Baro grimaced, unconsciously racking his neck back and forth to loosen the tension there.
"Also, put on another pot of kahve."
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx-O-xxxxxxxxxxxxX
After mentally writing off whatever else had been inside the treasure room, Baro returned the ayatan to his ship and refiled his flask with piping hot liquid. It would be some time before he could drink it, as Glitz had kept it simmering at a temperature normally used to eradicate deadly bacteria. Packing it into his satchel, Baro decided on a course that would take him past the commissary.
While significantly smaller than the upper galleries, the tower's personnel cabins were no less opulent, especially given that they were occupied for no more than a week before their occupants were rotated out of the Void in order to prevent incidents of homicide and violent psychosis. Or at least, they would be opulent if Baro could see them. Looking into the dark corridor, where the light of the upper floor dissolved into inky black, the Void Trader suppressed a sigh. With a petulant click of his fingers, he ordered the Osprey to activate its lights.
"All sublevel faculties appear to be in a state of low power output," said Glitz. "I can reroute, but this will redirect power from the reactors and decrease Pendula stability by a further 5.12%. Should I turn on the lights?"
"Obviously not!"
"That is the most sensible decision you've made all evening."
Irritable and tired, Baro snapped at her in a dialect no longer spoken, of a desert people no longer amongst the living. When Glitz made no reply, he rolled his neck again and moved into the corridor. There was no music this time, only the steady, staccato click of his boots. Here and there, potted crystal trees cast pools of shimmering light, their branches unkempt and snarled, clawing at the walls like beasts in a cage. Baro frowned at them, unnerved for reasons he couldn't quite name.
"Your heartrate and cortisol levels indicate an unhealthy amount of stress," Cephalon Glitz reported. "Accordingly, I added the appropriate measure of supplements to your beverage. Which you are not drinking."
"I don't recall giving you permission to tamper with my kahve, Glitz," Baro growled, stopping in front of a door and tapping its recessed control panel. Thankfully, those particular systems were still very much online.
"You implied consent when you placed me in charge of your well-being," the Cephalon rejoined.
The door popped open with a hiss, exhaling a sweetly scented gush of air that hadn't been touched or contaminated since the room's last occupant had sealed the door behind him. Baro leaned aside and let the Osprey go first, shining its light on the lightly curving walls. Everything was the color of gold or ivory bone. A fitting aesthetic for a dead empire, Baro thought, entering the room himself after a moment. There was a matching nightstand and bed, both very low to the ground, as was common in Orokin culture, and a large desk inset with glistening, opalescent panels. Baro set his fingertips on it and found the polished surface unusually cold to the touch. He removed his hand.
There was a statuette in the wall-niche, a twisting, double-helix of rare red crystal, each arm terminating in a sharp point. Baro had a disturbing flash of his own hand driving it into someone's throat, popping their esophagus with a warm, infinitely pleasant gush of blood. He shook his head, pushing the grisly thought away, and secured the sculpture in the bottom of the Osprey's crate before setting off for the next room.
Despite their inherent grandeur, however, they were all very spartan in terms of paraphernalia. It took nearly an hour, and over a dozen cabins, before Baro found something that made the entire search worthwhile. It was propped in the corner next to the bed, a vision of glossy black lacquer over Martian cypress, its slender neck scintillating with gold inlay. It was enough to take Baro's breath away despite his increasingly bad mood.
White gloves on, the thought of even a single fingerprint on that gleaming black surface making him shudder, he lifted the shawzin from its cradle and held it up like his firstborn child. "Well, now," he crooned, turning it over to examine the back. There wasn't a crack or blemish in sight. "How about that?"
There was a silver flute on the bedside table as well, right next to another fluttering Orta and several crystalline datapads. Baro caught his lower lip in his teeth, the sound escaping him anything but decent. He gestured for the Osprey to put down the crate and immediately lined its cluttered interior with the remainder of the packing gel. Nothing was going to damage that perfect, beautiful shawzin. Baro even snatched the silks from the bed and swaddled the instrument inside them, his hands achingly gentle despite the thumping knot in his temple. The painkillers had not helped at all.
"By my calculation, your beverage flask is not designed to maintain optimum temperature for more than 45 minutes," Glitz pressed.
"You want to calculate something, calculate the Void-damned sound in the comms!" Baro hissed, giving his helmet a sharp, irritable smack. He'd been hearing it for a while now; that infernal tap, tapping from the galley. He wondered if it'd ever gone away at all, or if he'd simply been too distracted to notice. Either way, it had gotten louder, or at least more persistent, as if something was rapping on the side of his skull.
"There is no ambient noise present in any of the communication channels, Mr. Ki'Teer."
"Check ultrasonic and electromagnetic frequencies."
"I have already done so," Glitz continued patiently. "Comms are clear of interference."
"Glitz, don't tell me nothing's there! I can hear-"
Baro cut himself off, a cold prickle of unease going down his spine. His hand flashed across his gauntlet, bringing up the unit's holographic display. A quick check of the tower's systems revealed nothing in the way of silent alarms. But… of course there weren't. Glitz would have warned him if she had detected any.
Despite his initial stab of fear, the sound and grating headache didn't seem to be the work of a particularly sneaky Neural Sentry. Yet he was certain the two were connected. He was missing something. A tight knot formed in his gut.
Glitz would have warned him…
Wouldn't she?
She had access to his personal HUD and could easily remove the pertinent information. Baro's thoughts began to tumble. What reason would she have to conceal a potential situation from him? She was annoyingly prompt when it came to warning him of danger, up to and including a notice to watch his step when disembarking, because there was a quote "5% chance he could twist an ankle".
The white gloves had suddenly turned hot and restrictive.
Baro tossed them inside the crate.
Cephalons were programmed to be trustworthy and reliable, but they'd also had been programmed to self-preserve. He'd threatened to overwrite her personality precepts. Not the first occasion he'd done so, admittedly, but this time had obviously been the straw that broke the kubrow's back. If Glitz had interpreted his banter as a threat, then the quickest way to guarantee her own safety would be to cause a deficit in his. Baro swallowed, his eyes straying towards the door – a door she could easily lock via remote, trapping him in a ready-made tomb. If she cut life support, it would only be a matter of hours before the oxygen ran out.
Baro casually moved outside the cabin, his skin itchy and crawling with a sudden outbreak of sweat. Surely he was misreading the situation. Glitz had been his companion for over a decade.
"Your epinephrine levels have risen by 13% since my last report," said Glitz. "I recommend you drink the kahve before you are once again complaining about its lack of palatable temperature."
Ah, so that's how she planned to do it. Not slow suffocation, but something she'd slipped into his flask. She didn't have access to any poisons, not in the traditional sense of the word, but there were numerous substances aboard the Nefer'Tem that could be employed to the same effect, including pretty much anything in the ship's onboard trauma kit. Baro swallowed hard. He'd given the Cephalon too much access to critical systems. He should have retained some sort of fail-safe.
He had to get back to his ship.
Taking a handheld light from his satchel, Baro hurried east along the personnel section, leaving the Osprey to hover in the last cabin. He had to keep his manner casual otherwise the Cephalon was bound to get wise and trigger another Pendula quake, or unleash the Neural Sentry she obviously had chomping at the bit. Open cabins leered at him from both sides like hungry, gaping maws, the occasional gleam of reflected light shining out from their depths.
"You've forgotten the Osprey."
"I didn't forget," said Baro, keeping his voice level. "Merely a change of plans."
Several moments passed in silence, broken only by the echo of his footsteps.
"If you intend to return to the upper floors, you are going the wrong way," Glitz informed him smugly, which of course meant he was heading in the right direction. "Shall I mark a waypoint on your HUD?"
And lead him directly into some fiendish Orokin snare, no doubt. Baro set his jaw, feeling an icy trickle of perspiration ooze from beneath his cowl. He kept walking. He was a veteran of over a hundred expeditions into the Void. He would not be outplayed by a Cephalon.
"What are you doing?"
Baro ignored her. He reached a T-junction at the end of the corridor, went to make the corner – and found that he couldn't remember which direction he'd come from. The way into the personnel section had been straight and uninterrupted. There hadn't even been a junction before… had there? Baro couldn't remember. No matter. As always, he'd left the doors open on the cabins he'd already explored. It would be a simple matter to follow them back to the galley. He urgently panned his light back and forth, his breath coming quicker.
The rooms were sealed in both directions.
"Glitz, reopen the doors," he hissed through clenched teeth.
"I have not closed any doors," said Glitz. "I must ask that you cease all forward momentum and retrace your steps. The local current is becoming increasingly unstable. Another upset to the Pendula is inevitable, and you are without your Osprey."
"Is that a threat?" Baro spat, taking a few steps down the left-hand passage.
There was a heavy pause.
"Why would you perceive it as such?" Glitz questioned slowly.
"Oh, don't play coy with me," Baro laughed without humor. There was a curving set of stairs in front of him. He didn't remember any stairs except for his initial descent from the galley. These were not those, otherwise they'd be bathed in light pouring down from above. He must have come the other way.
"When I get back to the ship, I'll do more than adjust your personality. I will completely deactivate you," said Baro. He was tipping his hand, but he didn't care. Glitz already knew he was onto her.
"That's why you sealed the cabins, isn't it? To keep me from finding my way back. Well, it's going to take more than that, you hear me?"
"If you are referring to the doors in your immediate area, they are sealed because you have not yet explored in this sector. It is not like you to forget basic pathfinding, Mr. Ki'Teer. This is very troubling. Please turn around. Void energy is increase-"
Her voice ended abruptly. A low-frequency rumble shuddered the tower, softly at first, then with growing intensity. Baro leaned his back against the wall, his mouth set in a hard line as the structure went through a slow, nauseating twirl felt mostly in his stomach and inner ear. The rap, tap, tapping had reached a crescendo, it's terribly perfect rhythm driving fissures through his brain. Baro inhaled the stench of diesel fumes and charred flesh.
"Sprae oot. Traf ramn kle skoom!"
Baro's head snapped around to look at the darkened stairs. The harsh, mushy syllables were unmistakable, the voices impossible to forget. Each and every Grineer shared the same malformed vocal cords, after all.
Stifling a cry, Baro moved sideways along the wall. If Cephalons had the ability to feel pain, he would have sworn to start ripping out fingernails. Glitz knew better than to try and kill him with the tower itself, he couldn't help but note, a curl of self-assured arrogance winding through his chest. He knew every Orokin defense system ever made; how to avoid them and, if there was no other option, how to disable them – but he couldn't deactivate a hail of bullets. She'd gotten someone else to do her dirty work.
They were close. He could hear them.
Fear drenched Baro's senses like a cold bath. He struggled to keep it down, struggled to think rationally. He could activate the tower's defenses and see how those Grineer dogs liked dealing with the Neural Sentry. A smile sliced across the Void Trader's face, but it was short-lived. There were a lot of Grineer. Twenty, thirty – at least a hundred. Baro didn't know why that number came to him, only that it did. He fixated on it, turned the awful implication over and over in his aching head, until it'd seared in place behind his retinas.
"Ran's tet huh ket arai!"
Footsteps pounded on the stairs, and Baro did the only sensible thing left to do.
He ran.
Bolting down the corridor at a full sprint, he expected to feel a hail of bullets tunnel into his spine, but the Grineer did not open fire. Maybe they wanted him alive. He would be a treasure trove of information regarding Orokin sites they could strip for parts to rivet onto their chugging, clanking ships.
Baro ran even faster, fighting his holster for his Lex. It took him three tries to release the safety, only for his boot to catch on one of the corridor's many recessed pylons. Baro flew forward, his momentum hurling him at least another yard to land on his stomach, face cracking against the slick, unyielding tile. His lip split open and a hot trickle of blood oozed down his chin. Grit dug into his palms as he pushed himself back up, sticking to the sweat-damp skin of his cheek.
Red, rusted sand covered the floor -
-and the breeze that suddenly gusted into Baro's face was dry with desert heat.
The Void Trader heaved himself up with a scream, blindly flinging a shot into the corridor behind him. Something shattered with a tinkle of broken crystal. Baro didn't wait to see what he'd hit.
Firing off another round, he fled into the hot, grasping darkness.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx-O-xxxxxxxxxxxxX
Baro lost all sense of time and direction.
He could have been running for hours or days, the endless, golden corridors stretching out before him. His legs burned. His lungs filled with fire, laboring to drag in more air than they could hold. And still, the Grineer horde was never more than a dozen paces behind. Why waste ammo when he'd eventually collapse? Blood from his split lip sprayed and foamed with every rasping breath. Whenever the Grineer were involved, the dead were the lucky ones. Captured prisoners were taken to labor camps or sold into slavery. Most didn't last a year.
There was a faint glow in the corridor ahead. Baro put on another frantic burst of speed, hurtling through an elaborately tall, cylindrical doorway and into the massively empty space beyond. Shadows clung to the edges of the room, but Baro could tell it was vaguely circular in design, with enormous towers the size of ancient trees spaced evenly about the rim. The pattern was more or less repeated in the center of the room, with a raised dais surrounded by three organically curved pylons, their gilded crowns arching towards each other like a broken halo. Beneath them, floating lights shimmered and danced like disembodied eyes.
Stumbling with exhaustion, Baro made his way up the stairs leading to the dais. He was making himself more visible to the Grineer, but he didn't have anywhere left to go – and not enough strength left to search the huge room. There was a hot ball of pain behind his left knee, most likely indicating a torn ligament. He'd run too far, too fast. Gritting his teeth, Baro limped into the center of the glow and let his shoulder thud against one of the pylons, his chest heaving. Something vaguely like a female voice scratched through his comms, all coherent meaning lost in thick static. Baro neither noticed nor cared.
With shaking hands, he dropped the empty magazine from his Lex and fumbled to slot another. Assuming perfect aim, he had enough left to score eight lethal hits against the Grineer – seven if he wanted to hold back a shot in order to avoid being taken alive.
All around him, sand trickled from unseen gaps in the ceiling. Baro could hardly breathe the thickness of the air, heavy with sweat and fear and death. Somewhere above him, surrounded by an entourage of wheeling eyes, the sun burned hot and fierce. Baro was shivering despite the feverish heat of it, his right eye a solid mass of pain so severe it was causing halos in his vision. He couldn't line up the magazine. His hands were shaking too badly. The clammy squeeze of his collar was strangling him like thick, oily fingers.
With sudden, strange desperation, the Void Trader clawed at his glove-suit, desperate to get it away from his throat. Tearing his collar open with a little pop, Baro jerked it down past his collarbone. He also tore at the fine, expensive gold chain he wore around his neck. It bit into his skin but did not break, violently hoisting a tiny glass vial filled with Martian sand. It banged against his knuckles and the Void Trader instinctively grabbed at it, all other concerns submerged under the sudden, new fear that it would fall to the ground and shatter, spilling its precious contents. His hand closed around the vial-
-and all at once, the memory of it, the idea of it, pierced through the membrane suffocating his thoughts.
The Grineer came from the nightmares of a child. The footsteps pounding against the darkness, always circling but never drawing any nearer, were not the sloppy, disorganized beat of an Arid regiment, but the heartbeat of the Void itself. That rhythm… that terrible, relentless rhythm. Baro curled his knuckles against his temple and felt something burst in his sinuses, filling his nose with blood. A soft whimper of pain escaped his lips. He tilted his head back. The desert sun continued to wheel above him, but it… it wasn't made of fire and heat, he realized, only pixels of holographic light.
"Void Sickness," he croaked. "Oh, gods."
The Orokin had not been unreasonable in their fear. The Void was a place where all laws inverted, where even reality was a fluid, malleable thing. It fed on weakness, exposed every flaw, and turned ordinary thoughts into a hellscape of clutching, crawling paranoia. The Void didn't just watch. It reached inside and twisted.
Baro slid down to sit at the base of the pylon. He'd heard sounds in the Void before: inhuman whispers and haunting cries of pain, a choir of Orokin voices lamenting their splendid house of gold. He'd also encountered apparitions of light and energy with no face, name or purpose, doomed to wander between consoles in an endless mimicry of life, and seen shadows out of the corner of his eye.
But not once had he been driven to the sorry state he was in now.
"Oh, you sorry, stupid fool," the Void Trader moaned.
He'd known something was different today, that the Void was too strong, its insidious influence progressing too rapidly, and he'd willfully ignored what should have been an obvious warning. He should have known better. He did know better! His mental and emotional tolerances had built up over many years, but there was a reason he only spent fourteen hours in the Void at any one time, and only twenty-one in any given month.
This was his second trip in the same week.
His comms lit up with a burst of static.
"I have rerouted around the interference, Mr. Ki'Teer," Glitz announced primly, startling him with the sudden volume and proximity of her voice. "These fluxes in the local current appear to be happening at semi-regular intervals, leaving you approximately 45 minutes until the next incident. Pendula now register an output of only 72% normal capacity. …Mr. Ki'Teer? Are you conscious?"
There was a long pause. Then, in an upsettingly small voice, "Sir, please answer me."
"I'm here, Glitz," Baro rasped, shame heating his face.
"Good. Your irrational behavior these past sixteen minutes is very concerning. I believe you are suffering from the detrimental effects of the Void and recommend immediate evacuation, before symptoms get any worse." Her evaluation of him was clinical and pessimistic, and Baro's eyes nearly went dim with tears. Inaros, what a fool he'd been.
"Mark a route on my HUD," he mumbled, trying to gather himself.
"Negative. Your sense of direction is obviously malfunctioning," said Glitz. "I have accessed your Osprey by remote and am piloting it towards your current location. You will follow the unit once it has arrived."
Baro would have been offended if the Cephalon's statement hadn't been embarrassingly true. He acknowledged the order to wait and slouched against the pylon, trying to shift into a more comfortable position. His knee had already begun to stiffen and the ache in his head had not dissipated – merely ceased to cloud his mind. To distract himself, he watched the lights above his head. No, not just mere lights, the Void Trader realized, finally seeing the obvious.
Mercury… Venus… Earth… Mars… a hundred tiny, tumbling shards that made up the asteroid belt, and the Jovian Titans at the edge of known space: the Origin System rendered in exquisite detail. Orokin script flickered in the hologram, and while Baro's understanding of the spoken language amounted to that of a small child, he could read the calligraphy easily enough. He wondered what sorcery kept the information up to date.
In any other circumstances, the superb beauty and the slow, hypnotic tumble of light would have invited him to relax, but darkness lurked in the imitation cosmos, screaming faces and other anxious visions manifesting in the gaps between planets. Across the dais, the Void Trader's own reflection watched him from a shiny panel of forma, alternating between smiling at him, laughing manically, and placing the Lex against his temple, right where the pain was the strongest.
Baro closed his eyes, quelling his harrowing urge to panic by reciting something familiar and comforting. He'd shunned his past, buried it in an unguent jar deep inside his heart, and convinced himself it no longer had any power over him. It'd been a lie, of course. He'd named his ship after the first sunlight of creation (a charm of protection and good-luck) and remembered the prayer his mother used to sing as that same sun disappeared below the western horizon. The only difference now was that he'd ceased to feel bitter, and the words no longer tasted like ash. Baro clutched the vial to his chest, unconsciously rocking back and forth, all but folded against his updrawn knee.
I rise like the sun above the olive trees, like the moon above the date palms.
Where there is light, I shall be.
Laughter sounded somewhere in the Void, giving birth to a distorted echo, a sinister cascade of whispers that included the Grineer, the Tenno, even that two-bit hustler Maroo – whom Baro regarded with quiet scorn. Voices skittered at the edge of his mind like hungry rats, waiting for him to succumb.
"Where there is darkness, there shall be none of me," Baro continued firmly, voicing his next words aloud despite the thin, high tone of his voice. "I rise like the moon above the date palms. I am counted as one among the stars."
Baro felt a new light against his eyelids and reluctantly cracked them open to see a bright, bobbing glow approaching from the corridor. A moment later his Osprey hovered into the room, spotted him, and swiftly made its way over, loaded crate swinging jauntily beneath. Baro's anxiety flared. He couldn't help it. The Osprey was armed. If he'd been wrong, if Glitz should decide-
"Come with me, Mr. Ki'Teer."
Planting his feet, Baro shoved himself up using the pylon for support, teeth bared in a pained grimace. The Osprey moved in close, buffeting him with rotor-wash. "I knew it. You are dying," Glitz observed morosely. "I will contact Larunda and have them prepare the ICU."
"It's just a twisted knee!" Baro squawked.
He hobbled after the Osprey, leaving the stellar observatory behind.
Ten minutes later, exhausted and drenched in sweat, he'd reached his ship unmolested. Of course he did. His feelings of persecution were only a symptom of the Void itself, and not the result of any real danger. Baro made his way into the hold and sealed the loading ramp behind him, grateful for the ship's comparatively dim, fragrant interior.
"I have already gone through all pre-flight diagnostics," said Glitz. "We are ready to depart."
She engaged the Nefer'Tem's maneuvering thrusters and the ship lifted smoothly into the air. Wobbling his way to the cockpit, Baro dropped into the pilot's seat as his Cephalon went through the necessary maneuvers, one eye squeezed shut against the relentless pressure in his head. The sound was still there, hovering on the fold between audible and ultrasound, and dancing the tarantella against his inflamed neurons.
Slanting and weaving through the currents, Glitz activated the ship's Void Key without having to be told. As the electromagnetic bubble knit itself around the ship, an image skittered through Baro's mind and followed him through the fissure, a vision of eyes staring into his skull, sclera gone utterly black, pupils like swirling golden galaxies spackled with the heat of dying stars. Baro inhaled sharply, and suddenly the Void was gone.
Outside the viewscreen, there was only the calm, limitless black of normal space.
"Void Jump successful. All systems nominal."
Baro wilted in his chair with a little noise of relief. It was if someone had taken a nail out of his temple, leaving only the cold, clammy pressure of his cowl. He reached up and removed it, letting the ornate helmet plop to the floor next to his chair. The bridge was mercifully silent except for the distant vibration of the engines and the soft, nonintrusive beeping on the consoles. Baro reached up and raked both hands through his stark white hair, hiding his face in the blessed warmth of his palms. If the Neural Sentry had come upon him while he'd been out of his mind, or if his hysterical flight had triggered one the tower's numerous traps…
"I nearly got myself killed," he breathed.
Admitting the error took away some of its sting, but Glitz was not inclined to be merciful.
"That is an accurate statement. Did I not inform you that you take too many risks?" There was an irascible note of smugness in her otherwise monotone voice. "You are lucky to have me as ship's Cephalon, seeing as you are unable to properly maintain yourself. Do you wish me to brew more of your caffeinated beverage?"
Baro huffed a laugh, but Glitz wasn't done.
"You should know, however, that kahve – especially in the amounts you drink – is known to cause sleeplessness, acid reflux, arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, and a .15% decrease in bone density," the female Cephalon was quick to lecture him, rattling off a list of side-effects.
"It also yellows your teeth," she added snidely.
Baro let out a gasp. "By the stars, not my teeth!" he bemoaned.
The pair lapsed into comfortable silence. It had been an appalling day, the Void Trader concluded wearily, but despite the nervous shivers still cascading down his arms, he'd escaped intact. Mostly. His knee felt like it was filled with broken glass, his face was covered in dried blood, and the sour stench of his body was starting to become apparent. Baro needed a long soak, an ice pack, and a massive glass of cabernet sauvignon – not necessarily in that order.
"Take us to Larunda. And as for the kahve," he added, wagging a finger in the direction of one of the audio pickups, "you can brew another pot when you learn to do it properly. It doesn't need boiled like you're purifying a tank of Grineer sewage!"
"Considering the, ahem, "source" of the product, I do not think I am overacting," Glitz sniffed.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx-O-xxxxxxxxxxxxX
One week later…
Nezha was barely out of his Liset before he was almost plowed under by an eager mob of Corpus bankers and executives, not to mention a handful of well-to-do Ostrons on their way to the 2nd floor. He twitched a bemused smile, making his way through the Relay at a more sedate pace.
"Honestly, Operator," Ordis complained. "What could he possibly be giving away today?"
"Baro Ki'Teer, give something away?" Nezha asked, his tone faintly amused.
"Ah, yes. You are correct, Operator, as always. Do you think a round of negotiations– brrrzzzzt, paaaainful torture– will convince him to lower his prices? We could employ Valkyr for the task!"
"I doubt it."
"We could try," said Ordis encouragingly. "I know a few methods of my own!"
Nezha chuckled as he cut across the main concourse. He was not going to elbow his way through a mob in order to conduct his business with the Void Trader. He would wait until traffic had calmed down. Until then, he had several things to discuss with Cephalon Simaris. To either side of the corridor, heads turned to surreptitiously follow his progress, then just as quickly returned to the gleaming copper floor.
It was, however, quite impossible to escape Simaris' pedantic clutches without engaging in a discourse worthy of the Orokin senate, and it was with great relief that Nezha briskly walked – he was Tenno and did not run from anything less than an imploding reactor – from the Cephalon's chamber over an hour later. As he'd hoped, the flow of people and personnel had slowed to a more manageable level, and he was able to make his way to the Void Trader's kiosk relatively unmolested.
"A little beyond your reach? Perhaps a Darvo Deal would be more your speed?" Baro was saying to an older woman with regrettably bright pink lips stretched over a hollow, skull-like grimace, giving her a mien not dissimilar to a taxidermied horse. She flashed Baro a disgusted look.
"Do you have any idea who I am?" she glowered.
"No, nor do I care to!" Baro laughed. "Do come again when you have the necessary funds."
Glaring at the Void Trader as if hoping the force of her spite would flash cook his intestines, the woman startled violently as Nezha drew near, the lazuline glow of his Warframe puddling on the ground at his feet – neither of which stayed on the tile once he ceased moving, bobbing gently about a half meter above the floor. The woman's faded blue eyes widened. She clutched her handbag and backed away as though he were the carrier of some disfiguring disease, hurrying away down the concourse as fast as her thin legs would take her.
"Mind you don't break a hip, madam," Baro muttered under his breath, switching his attention to Nezha. "What a pleasant surprise, Tenno. I thought you might have forgotten the communique I sent you."
"The system is… very busy," Nezha allowed softly, dipping his head in greeting.
"Not that I don't appreciate the ostentatious display of your Void powers," Baro added, one side of his mouth lifting into a clever smirk. "You do take assassination contracts, do you not? What would you charge to rid me of that… ahem, unfortunate creature?"
Nezha noiselessly put his feet back on the ground, directing a pointed look at the Void's Trader's wares.
"Now, now, Tenno. What kind of precedent would that set for my other customers?" Baro chided him warmly, turning around to rifle through the Orokin storage locker set into the back of his kiosk. Much harder to crack than any of the TITAN-class armored safes on the current market, but Nezha also suspected it had less to do with security and everything to do with aesthetic. The Tenno folded his arms to wait, his thoughts drifting.
He hadn't been lying in regards to the delay. Despite the swath he and the other Tenno were carving through the system's warring factions, there never seemed to be any lack of things that required their attention. And there were… other concerns, besides. Despite further discussions with the Red Veil, neither Palladino nor any of her acolytes could explain the connection between Rell's breakdown and the outbreak of mass hysteria that'd compelled at least a quarter of the syndicate to commit murder, suicide, or both. Seven days later, Nezha was still coming across bloody scrawlings and Red Veil adherents who'd apparently beaten themselves to death with a length of chain, or driven a knife into the tender hollow of their right temple. It was nothing if not disturbing, even for a Tenno.
"Here you are," said Baro, handing him a long, thin box. "You had better appreciate the work it took to acquire that. It's not easy fulfilling custom requests, so I trust you recall the sum I attached to your communique?"
As if he could forget. If Ordis had possessed a jaw, Nezha was certain it'd dropped to the floor the previous morning as they both read the six-figure sum. And that hadn't even included the ducats. Nezha reached into his pouch and withdrew the same amount, which Baro took with a winning smile.
"We should do this again sometime," he said.
He sounded tired, and Nezha noticed that Baro's smile – while entirely sincere – was pulled just a little too tight, showing off too many of the Void Trader's dazzlingly white teeth. Nezha's eyeless gaze looked him up and down, assessing the man's body language, what he'd said and what he hadn't. He was not so adept at reading auras as his Tenno sister, she of the kuva, who focused on healing and restoration rather than destruction, but Nezha's powers had grown strong since his final awakening – and Baro's life-force had grown muddy grey roots, poisoned by the deadly adularescence of Void energy coating his skin. Such energy had always been there in small, residual amounts, but never this dense. Never this obvious. Reaching out with his senses, Nezha discovered he could feel the jagged lick of it against his mind, echoing with an all-too familiar rhythm. He was glad the Void Trader couldn't see the uneasy expression that flitted across his face.
"You've spent too much time in the Void," said Nezha. "You should rest before it does you harm."
Baro startled, then flashed him an uncomfortable look. Not angry, but certainly not happy either. "Didn't your mother teach you that it's rude to pry, Tenno?" he countered lightly, but with an underlying current of steel that warned against further questioning.
Nezha shifted the long package under his arm, sketched a bow, and moved away from the kiosk. When he was about two meters away, he turned around and looked back. Baro regarded him warily.
"If you have need of my assistance, you know how to reach me," the Tenno intoned softly, the words heavy with things both obvious and implied. Baro's mouth gave an unhappy twitch. He nodded once, and Nezha walked away without another word.
He returned to his Liset and sank into a meditative hover as Ordis set a rendezvous course with the Orbiter, carefully unwrapping the parchment from the padded case. With a click, he undid the catch and opened it on his lap. Before all other weapons, Tenno mastered the skana – and this one was a stunning example, it's lightly curving blade enameled with energized prisma crystal. Nezha wrapped his fingers around the hilt and held it up. As expected, the weapon was exquisitely balanced, latent Void energy rippling down the blade in visible clouds. Nezha nodded to himself, satisfied. It had been well-worth the price.
After the incident with the Stalker and Hunhow, Demon of the Old War, Nezha had been unable to shake an uncomfortable sense of foreboding. The Sentients had not been extinguished. Like the dreaded Eidolons that roamed the plains of old Earth, they merely lay silent, waiting for the proper moment to awaken. The Tenno had defeated them once before, but only just. If the Sentients rose again, there would be no Orokin dreadnaughts with railguns powerful enough to crack a moon in two, no Dax soldiers to assist them in battle, even if such men had only served as harriers and decoys.
The Tenno would have to face them alone.
Brave as the Ostrons were, fishing spears and hand-forged zaws wouldn't stand a chance against the enemy that the Orokin, in their infinite hubris, had failed to shackle, nor would the people of Solaris United. Their unbreakable spirit would only ensure they died on their feet, flashing an upraised middle finger rather than groveling on the blood-soaked earth. Their one weapon against the Sentients was the Void itself, the very thing that truly made them Tenno. Weapons like this skana were a second-hand countermeasure at best, but even so, Nezha would rather go into battle with a slight advantage versus none at all.
At his back, he sensed the noiseless stirring of a presence, the sudden weight of attention pressing between his shoulder blades like a bar of molten iron. Nezha resolutely did not turn. He pressed his eyes shut.
"Hey, kiddo."
Hey, kiddo.
Hey, kiddo.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx-O-xxxxxxxxxxxxX
TRIVIA
-o- In Egyptian mythology, the young god Nefertem (also spelled Nefertum or Nefer'Tem) represented both the first sunlight at the creation of the world and the scent of the Egyptian blue lotus. Some of his epitaphs were "He Who is Beautiful" and "Water-Lily of the Sun". He was a symbol of fragrance and beauty and, as a minor protection deity, was commonly invoked as a good-luck charm.
-o- Go ahead and Google "kopi luwak". I dare you.
-o- "Sprae oot. Traf ramn kle skoom!" – "Spread out. Track down the scum!"
-o- "Ran's tet huh ket arai!" – "Don't let him get away!"
-o- The idea for the beautiful Orokin "Stellar Chart Room" comes from unused Warframe concept art by Branislav Perkovic on ArtStation.
-o- Baro's prayer is from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Although it is certainly a funerary text, the actual title is closer to The Book of Spells for Going Forth by Day. A more apt translation to English would be the Egyptian Book of Life.
-o- Easter Egg Hunt! Can you find them? There are two plugs at a certain trilogy of psychological horror games, and several references which may or may not have compared Baro to a particular character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I think y'all know damn well which one, LOL. Headcannon has been established; it's only a matter of time before the leopard-fur cape makes an appearance.