The waiting was the worst part. The four Tenno were suspended in body-shaped rigs that locked at the hands and legs. Ash could hear the frantic chatter and the rushing footsteps of the crew above, who were most likely making hasty preparations for deployment.
The Tenno were not given a time for when the deployment began, they had to just wait there, bodies sagging in the electromagnetic cufflinks, with only their nervous breaths and the hum of machinery from behind them to keep them company. The sounds from upstairs now stopped, with only one of the crew members talking to everyone else. The voice stopped after a few moments, and was followed by the slow but loud whining and droning of the engines. Ash steadied his breathing, ushering an ancient mantra of his people with low words.
"Dominus noster, venator animarum nos protegat. Educ nos una, quia cadamus quando nos separati sunt." He closed his eyes in prayer, ignoring the piercing cry of the engines.
The drop ship detached immediately and fell, pulled by Venus' unrelenting gravity. Ash felt the air being kicked out of his lungs by the sudden drop. Like a bird shot from the air, the ship took a steep dive into the planet's atmosphere, thick clusters of dust, sand and heated rock scraping against the hull of the ship and fierce winds flattening the Tenno against their holding capsules.
"Fly, damn you!" Ash managed to wheeze out angrily.
As if to obey his wishes, the engines flared into life, tongues of blue flame spitting and roaring, fighting desperately against the g-forces that pulled the ship under like an anchor. Ash closed his eyes and willed for the noise-cancellation systems in his warframe to switch on. The suit obeyed him, and his ears were coated with a velvety curtain of blissful ultrasound. He closed his eyes and allowed his muscles to relax.
"Dominus noster, venator animarum nos protegat. Educ nos una, quia..."
The metal grate clattered onto the suspended platform above the engine room. Four huge, spherical generators rumbled and droned, spewing black smoke through metal pipes going through the ceiling and diverting some kind of luminescent yellow sludge through transparent tubing into the wall. Fire flared through the metal protectors, wild beasts of flame licking their tongues through the slits in-between.
"Such crude machinery," Volt could barely be heard over the cacophony, "I wonder how this pile of scrap can even fly. I'm glad we didn't bring the Vauban here, he wouldn't sleep for days."
"I don't think anyone can sleep with this noise," replied the Banshee, "let's move on. And stay quiet."
"Tenno, there are no bio-signatures in this room. I detect three in the next room, however. Ash, clear the way to the intelligence room."
Ash complied, willing the suit to release small smoke clouds that reflected any light back out in random directions, reducing any visibility of his body to small distortions and shimmers. It was the Vauban of the Silent Swords wing, one that specialized in the art of stealth and was home to many of Ash's kin, who had implanted this system into his warframe. The man truly was a genius, and Ash had yet to thank him properly.
He drew his Nikana, the blade whispering coldly as it drew power from the warframe. The edge shimmered with electrical energy and small bolts danced across its silvery surface. Ash gazed longingly at this beautiful creation, only to be interrupted by a sudden clang that came from one of the engines. He sighed and ran down the metal scaffolding, threw himself over the railing and landed flawlessly with a roll onto the ground floor.
He rounded a corner and spotted the three marines that the Lotus had mentioned earlier. Their bodies were grossly out of proportion; their machine powered legs were spindly and frail as compared to their huge shoulder pads and torsos. They walked painfully slowly and they often spoke in garbled, ugly dialects that Ash couldn't understand. Ash strained to hear anything important, any names that might be useful.
"Na scre bal sa sektor."
"Gusch lagh, mer tamnad gornekh!"
The three of them chuckled for a few seconds before coughing and muttering among themselves again. Ash couldn't bear to listen to any more of their rabble. He disengaged his cloak, jumped onto a wall and on top of a stack of crates before leaping right over the marines' heads. He attached his Nikana to one of the locks in his foot and tucked his arms in to quicken his descent.
The katana drove straight through the middle marine's head and out through his pelvis, letting the dead body slide down and split in two. Ash disengaged the lock on his foot and used his momentum to stab the marine to his right through the gut. The soldier grabbed the Nikana desperately to free himself, but Ash answered this with a swift thrust upside the head and through the brain. The last marine left standing raised his Grakata-pattern machine gun in a last, futile defense. Ash let a dry laugh escape his throat and threw a Kunai from his belt into the marine's throat. The gun clattered onto the ground while the Grineer marine grasped at the knife to try and stop his airways from filling with blood. He collapsed onto the floor, twitching and gurgling wet groans. He spat and coughed a slimy black mass onto the floor before exhaling one more ragged breath and letting the life leave his body. Ash looked away from this horrific display and wrenched his sword from the wall, cleaning off the blood with his gauntlet.
Ash continued on, jumping three flights of stairs effortlessly and rounding several more corners before arriving at a door with a rusted sign with "INTEL" hammered in to rusted metal in Grineer glyphs. Ash engaged his cloak once more and slowly opened the door. Several monitors lit a dim, pale light across the room, where workers sat lazily in their chairs and spoke into radios every so often. The room had a general, sluggish atmosphere, and Ash wondered if he should have even bothered to waste his time on these louts. Nevertheless, he had a mission to do.
His Nikana cleaved through the crew members in seconds, Ash might as well have had his eyes closed. The last engineer got to his feet and ran, stumbling several times out of pure fear. He tripped over a cable before he reached the door and wept. Ash was there in a second, and rolled over the crawling, shivering creature. His face was a ghastly, corpse-like white, covered in cold beads of sweat. He stank of terror, Ash could taste it coming from his desperate, shallow breaths.
"P-p-please..." He mumbled in absolute terror.
"I can't hear you." Ash growled.
"P-please d-don't-" His last words were cut off by a quick twist of a blade through his skull. The man slumped back lifelessly in Ash's hand, who withdrew the wrist blade and checked the room for any more survivors. There were none.
Ash rose. The only sounds he heard now were the low hum of computers and the slowly dripping of blood from his Nikana. He embraced this moment of perfect solitude for a second, breathed out and voiced,
"The room is clear. You can come in."
"Got it. We'll be with you in a minute, Ash." He heard Volt's voice crackle over the voice-link in reply.
***
The door slid open as the Banshee and Saryn stepped through. Small flashes of blue light could be seen through the slits of the air vent coming from the other room, where the Volt was most likely creating havoc with the ship's electronics. The Banshee immediately began to glide her fingertips along the desks until she found the microphone. She wired an audio link into her helmet, where split wires fused with the warframe's nanofibers.
"I've combined my warframe's microphones and amplifiers to the cable. I'm ready. Volt?" Her voice gave away the slightest impatience. Ash didn't blame her, the stench of blood was already starting to fill his helmet.
"Just a second over here. Things are a tiny bit complicated on my end." Volt apologized.
"What's wrong?" The Banshee asked.
"The backup generators have been short-circuited, but the electronics themselves are a bit trickier to handle. I'll tell you when I'm finished."
"Take your time, Volt." The Banshee said in reply, but Volt felt somehow that she was being
Volt gave a low hum in reply, and the voice-link ran silent again.
"Ash." Saryn's voice filled his helmet. He let out an exasperated sigh and terminated the link.
"Ash." She repeated.
He closed his eyes and replied, defeated, "What?"
"I understand that you don't want to talk to me, and I'm not going to follow you around and try to make friends, but-"
"By my understanding, that's what you've been doing this entire time, is it not?"
Saryn bit back a harsh reply, and let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. Her voice softened, and Ash imagined her doing her puppy-eyes routine as she spoke.
"All I want to say is that we may not be friends, but we are a team, and I am not your enemy. They are." She said as she pointed towards the surveillance displays.
"Leave me alone, Saryn." Ash said, annoyance lining his voice.
He heard a stifled insult, bitten back out of irritation. She cut the voice-link.
"How are we doing on the power grid, Volt?" The Banshee broke the silence.
"I'm all done on this end. I wasn't able to shut it off completely, but it should be enough."
"How long?"
"Enough." He repeated.
"Good enough. Initiate phase two."
Her scream could shatter mountains.