Hide and slay

Excalibur was moving fast. Instead of falling back, as anyone sane would likely do in such a case, he pressed forward into the facility. It seemed to take the enemy by surprise. At least, when he encountered enemies, they were solo or in pairs, no large groups. Automatically, he killed any security camera he saw. As long as he did not get predictable, he had the advantage. He was mobile and his Shade hid him from view for a few seconds every time an enemy got close. He would have to thank Alicia for that. That little machine had saved his tail more than once. The enemies he faced didn't have a chance against him. Then he paused as his ultra secure com fielded an incoming call and he went stiff as lights flickered around him.

"Excalibur, your time is at hand." The voice was unfamiliar. It was neither male nor female, androgynous. The Tenno shook his head.

Stalker. Crap

The odd being that the Tenno called Stalker was a mystery. Excalibur had encountered the being once before, when he had been captured. Stalker had ambushed and nearly killed the Banshee who had been escorting him and Alicia to the evacuation point. Stalker apparently made his cause the avenging of high level Grinneer and Corpus who had been targeted for assassination. But he wasn't apparently the brightest of bulbs. He always targeted one specific Tenno to the exclusion of all else. That had been what had saved the Banshee Serene when she had gone down under Stalker's blade. Alicia and Excalibur had distracted the being and driven him away. Excalibur shook his head. Of all the lousy timing. He had studied up on what little was known about the being. So he was not surprised when Stalker commed again.

"Your murder of Councilor Vay Hek will be avenged." Stalker said in it's odd tone. It was impossible to tell if the voice was male or female. Excalibur usually called Stalker a 'him' but that was just speculation and an easy description.

Vay Hek had been a Grinneer politician. Stress 'had been'. A team of Tenno, including Excalibur, had gone in to remove the man from his position. He had been abusing his power, using his position to 'remove' many of his opponents using the Grinneer military as his personal sword. He had been a threat to many across the system and -like many high ranking Grinneer- had even been experimenting with Orokin technology. One problem with Orokin technology was that it had the distressing habit of driving it's users mad. Tenno were trained to resist the effects, but no one else had the skill or training. Hek had been a tough fight, but when the smoke had cleared, four Tenno had still stood and the Councilor had fallen. Excalibur didn't always understand why the Lotus sent him and his kin on different missions, but that one had been different. Vay Hek had been a blot, one the Tenno had removed. It didn't really matter. Excalibur was Tenno, he did as the Lotus told him. She was... He paused. How did he think of the Lotus? He had a few moments. According to most of the records, the Stalker was highly predictable. One more taunt and then it would attack. He shook himself. The Lotus was the guide for the Tenno. She was always there, and always dependable. Some feeling of affection was probably normal. At times, he swore he heard an almost maternal aspect in her voice. Maybe he was just imagining it? Probably. He would have to ask Alicia about that. He shook himself and prepared for the fight to come.

He found himself in a corridor. No cover to be found, but then again, he didn't really want any obstacles. By all accounts, Stalker was a master class swordsman. Excalibur looked at each irregularity in the area, noting each and filing it away. The corridor was sided by a... Excalibur smiled grimly under his helmet and waited, standing in the middle of the corridor, his sword in hand. He stiffened as the lights flickered again.

"Your death comes!" A black shadow materialized not very far away at all. It raised it's sword, but paused when it saw Excalibur just standing there. Then it blurred into motion and Excalibur was in motion as well.

Faster than thought, two swords collided. Excalibur's gold sword clashed repeatedly with the assassin's black one. Parry, cut, slice, dodge... All the moves were instinctive, burned into muscle memory. Two blades moving at lightspeed, both clashing and seeking weak spots in their enemy's guards. A mistake at the speeds the two master swordsmen were using would be fatal, but neither made a mistake. When two master swordsmen met in battle, the battle was either over quickly, or it could take a very, very long time. This seemed to be firmly in the latter category. Excalibur might have had the tiniest advantage in speed. But... Whoever Stalker was, he was very strong and Excalibur found himself retreating a step, then two. Then the Tenno was firmly on the defensive as Stalker stepped up his attacks. Excalibur managed to connect with a part of Stalker's arm, but the blade turned on the enemy's armor and then Excalibur went flying as something hit him. He hit and rolled as he had been trained. Stalker was charging, but darted for cover as Excalibur's hand came up with his pistol. But Excalibur didn't aim at Stalker!

Instead, the Tenno fired off an entire clip from his Lato Prime at the long transparisteel window that formed part of the corridor of that habitat. The part that looked out on space. Most habitats had something like this, a place to stop and look at the stars. Even ground side, there were places like this, especially on small moons like Europa.

Stalker paused and then an inhuman scream of rage sounded as the window shattered. The sound cut off with dreadful finality as the air in the corridor was suddenly blown out into space. Excalibur watched without comment as the black armored form, flailing impotently and obviously screaming, was sucked out with the air. The Tenno activated his mag boots, made his way quickly to where he had seen an access terminal and hacked it. Armored shutters closed and the sound came back as air filled the area again. He knew Stalker wasn't dead. Tenno had shot the assassin, poisoned the assassin, burnt the assassin, had even cut him in half with an axe... The list went on and on. He always came back. Excalibur reloaded his pistol and put it away, drawing his rifle again before moving off.

Not bad. Excalibur thought with a sigh. Just as good with his sword as the records say. Silly choice of battleground, but all in all, not bad at all. If he had taken me by surprise, I would have fallen. Silly posturing.

One of the first lessons Tenno learned was 'Know your battleground'. The environment could be just as much a weapon as his sword or gun, as he had just proved. He checked his energy reserves and sighed again. His systems were badly depleted. Perhaps one more dash, maybe a jump or two. No more. Time to sneak some more. He found a vent and carefully pried the cover off. Some Tenno just shot vent covers off, he found that wasteful of ammunition and loud. He paused as voices became audible.

"Hull breach?" The voice was filtered through a helmet. Excalibur's eyes narrowed under his own helmet. It sounded like Grinneer, but... off. It was female, but it wasn't angry. It wasn't screaming in rage or pain like most Grinneer he had heard. "What happened?"

"No sign now." Another voice answer. This one was a Corpus crewman. "Probably the loose Tenno again. Long gone now. Although why he would blow out a window here is beyond me. No troops or mechs were anywhere near here."

"Tenno are weird. I disagree with these orders." The Grinneer said calmly. Far more calmly than any Grinneer that Excalibur could have ever imagined. "Why do we need to take him alive? It has cost us and will cost us a lot more." Excalibur froze and then listened harder.

"I don't know." The Corpus replied. "But the boss wants him alive. Orders are orders. Don't make much sense to me either, but we both owe the doc."

"Yeah." The Grinneer actually sighed. "I... I think I am..." She made a noise of discomfort and the other voice turned concerned.

"Are you okay?" The Corpus asked and Excalibur went even more stiff. Why was a Corpus asking a Grinneer if she was okay? What the hell was going on here? Obviously some kind of mind control. Or...something.

"I don't know." The Grinner sounded worried. Then she paused and her voice turned terrified. "I feel... Oh no. Oh god! I am angry again! Don't let me become what I was! Please!" She begged.

"Come on." The Corpus said in a very gentle tone. "Let's get you to medical."

"Don't let me hurt you." The female voice pleaded. "I don't want to be what I was. Stop me if you have to. Any way you have to!"

"It won't come to that, Nika." The male voice said gently. "Come on, let's get you to the docs." Was the female Grinneer crying as the sound of movement faded? Excalibur followed the soft sounds of movement as best he could in the ducts and then froze as a new voice sounded.

"What? Nika?" The female voice was...almost familiar. "What happened?"

"I don't know." The female Grinnner was still crying. "I was fine and then all of the sudden I was angry again. Don't let me hurt anyone, doc! Please!" She begged.

"Up on the table with you." The other female voice said kindly and Excalibur pressed forward cautiously to look out the vent. What met his eyes was unbelievable. A female Grinner marine lay on an exam table, her helmet off and lying to the side. Her head was encased in an odd apparatus that pulsed with sickly green power Familiar green power. Orokin technology. A female human in a medical tunic stood by the head of the bed working controls while a Corpus crewman stood nearby, all but wringing his hands in worry. "Ah." The doc said quietly. "Minor imbalance." She said kindly. "Easy fix. Good girl..." She crooned.

"Doc?" The Corpus asked.

"Nika will be fine, Jos." The doc replied evenly. "Just a minor imbalance. The gene reconstruction therapy is changing your brain, girl." Nika made a noise of dismay but the doc was quick to reassure her. "You are not the first of our Grinneer to have this problem and you won't be the last. But it is easy to fix."

"Good." The Grinneer said sadly. "I don't want to hurt people anymore, doc."

"Good." The doc said with a smile. "The reprogramming is holding."

"I don't like who I was before, doc." Nika said, tears starting to fall again. "I don't like her at all. She was mean and nasty."

"Nika." The doc chided her. "You are still you. But now you have a choice about how you act. You don't need to fight to survive all the time anymore."

"I was so scared." Nika said, closing her eyes. "When I woke and you said you had put the virus in me." Excalibur went cold at that, but Nika was continuing. "I thought I would become a mindless monster."

"Have you?" The doc asked kindly.

"No." Nika said with a smile that looked decidedly out of place on her face. "it is marvelous."

"I am glad you feel that way, Nika." The doc said with a smile that faded. "Our..newest guests are being a pain." Excalibur went still, listening with every fiber of his being.

"Tenno are strange." Nika said slowly. "I hated them, before..." She said with an odd catch to her voice. Regret? "Do you think we can welcome them?"

"We will try." The doc assured her. "But they are stubborn. The boss is talking to the first one we found in the detention bay. The others haven't woken from sedation yet. Stripping them out of their warframes is not an easy process for us or them. But... She just lies there. She refuses to eat or drink." Both the Grinneer and the Corpus hissed in dismay at that. "Yeah. If we have to inject it, it hurts a lot worse and it can cause permanent damage. We need to be very careful. They can and will suicide if we let them."

"Doc?" The Corpus asked carefully. "Do you know why the boss is fixated on the other? The one who is loose? We have lost a dozen people in two hours to that guy."

"Many, many years ago, he was the first." The doc said sadly. "Our first experiment."

"He what?" The Grinner asked, as stunned as Excalibur felt.

"We were-" Whatever else the doc was going to say was drowned out by the clanking charge of a MOA as it came up behind Excalibur and saw him. He turned to flee, but the shockwave it sent out slammed into him, throwing him bodily through the vent into the medical bay to where the doc was spinning in place with an oath.

The MOA jumped down, only to meet a burst of fire from Excalibur's Braton and collapse to the floor. He spun in place, to see that none of the three who had been talking had been given time to move. He raised his rifle and the Corpus raised his empty hands. What the...?

"No!" The man screamed, placing himself bodily between the doctor and the Tenno. "Don't hurt her!" The Grinneer rolled off the bed, but... She didn't draw a weapon either, just placed herself between the Tenno and the doctor too. The tableau was broken when the doctor spoke.

"Excalibur..." The doctor said slowly, carefully. "Please... Don't..." Excalibur looked from the doctor to the Grinneer to the Corpus and back and his rifle didn't waver. "You have no reason to trust me. I hurt you. I hurt you so very badly all those years ago. I didn't... I didn't know..." She pleaded. "You have got to believe me! We didn't know what we were doing!"

"Doc!" A shout came from outside and a pair of armored forms ran in, weapons up.

"No!" The doc screamed as Excalibur spun in place, accurate bursts of fire driving the armored Grinneer back toward the doorway and cover. Excalibur took advantage of the distraction to jump back into the vent and flee. The doctor's screams followed him. "Do not pursue him! Let him go!"

What the hell is going on here? Excalibur thought with a snarl, then focused on flight as the recognizable sounds of Corpus mechs jumping into the vent were heard behind him. I need to find my kin...Detention bay... She said detention bay... He darted off, his rifle at the ready. But his mind whirred with far more questions than answers.