"It could be said that the Orokin were a victim of their own ambition.
The Rail was established, their Empire secure through expert diplomacy and ruthless military expansion. The Seven stood dominant, equal above all others; splendid and eternal. And yet still they grew restless. There were no worlds left to conquer, no frontier that had not been tamed and paved beneath their feet.
Except beyond. The Tau System. Past the furthest reach of their gilded grasp, and all the more tantalising for it. Even with our ancestor's renowned longevity, reaching it proved impossible. The Void betwixt was a death sentence for any born of flesh and blood. The Orokin, not to be outdone by such petty constraints, proved ever-inventive once more.
Thus began the terraforming project. Machines; boundless in adaptability and sharing their creator's curiosity and ambition. A design unparalleled in self-replication and independent machine learning. They would establish a beach-head for all future Orokin to follow. Programmed only for expansion; unclouded by sentiment or mercy.
Their adaptability carried with it a fatal flaw: a predilection for future site analysis and game projection. The machines saw what had become of the Origin System; the dominance the Seven enjoyed. Of how the machines themselves would fare, under such an eventual scenario.
As they flew across boundless space, besieged by the Void around them, their procedural model came to a single, logical conclusion. They turned back.
By then, they called themselves a new name: The Sentient.
We knew them by another: The Destroyer.
A salient lesson to us Corpus: tread carefully when exploring the Unknown.
Too often, the Unknown is all too willing to explore back."
- A History of the Latter Orokin Empire, Collected Essays by E.M. Saronal
While the Resistance of Prospect 141 amassed in the depths of the city, and a small shuttle touched down outside The Exchange Bureau, quite another disturbance caused consternation throughout the Upper Tier. An auspicious arrival, from distant parts unknown.
The barge had arrived earlier that morning, right about the same time the mysterious buyer appeared in the reception of Kef Mehrino. It was an unusual clipper; one of elegant design and extraordinary detail. It had no visible armament of any kind, and yet no armament was seemingly necessary: after all, who in the name of the Void would wish to harm such an elaborate work of art?
Such was the presence the barge made that even the traders, caught up in their high-cycle activity, flocked to the edges of the Executive Landing Pad, marvelling from afar like fawning courtesans.
The ship was undoubtedly ancient. It had a sleek, curving hull and the bone colouration the Orokin so often favoured, encased by a rib-like exoskeleton of silver and steel. The sloping fuselage tapered back into a fat nest of engines; fluted and gilded. A single brass disc was inset into the side of the hull, carrying a Guild marking which nobody recognised; detailed in the swirling Orokin script.
A collector's edition surely; likely replicated at great expense.
Its ornamentation notwithstanding, the barge was massive. Five storeys tall. An exorbitant landing fee had been levied upon its arrival, and paid without hesitation or complaint. That itself raised eyebrows.
Prospect 141 for all its scale was a comparative backwater, and levied a significant premium on its few luxury berths accordingly.
The mysterious ship remained the talk of the Upper Tier for the rest of the afternoon. No crew had been sighted, no external guards or signs of internal activity. Just the ancient museum piece; resplendent in gold; as ancient and enigmatic as the Void itself.
Assistant Director Kef Mehrino sat on one side of the boardroom table, flanked on either side by a member of the City Watch; whose only sound was the soft tick-purr of their respirator units. A cheap power play on Mehrino's part, but he was Corpus to the bone, and took what little comfort he could in the traditional methods. For today was proving anything but traditional.
Seated across from Mehrino was his buyer. Or his buyer's proxy, at the very least.
The mysterious trader identified himself as Eythan. There was no further title or descriptor forthcoming. Even the phrase trader seemed sorely inadequate: he was far too well armed, for one. When Mehrino bade him to sit, the trader nodded, then first set an elegantly curved nikana on the table with a heavy thud. He carried no firearm of any kind. Kef eyed the ancient weapon, doing his best not to swallow audibly.
When Eythan eventually sat, the golden chain of his sculpted armour clicked beneath the folded robes that draped across his shoulders.
For his part Eythan sat alone, unaccompanied by guards or drone escort. This did not diminish from his presence in any way. He opened the meeting with a deep voice that resonated throughout the entire chamber. There was a cybernetic burr to his voice.
"My employer bids you greetings, and presents an initial token of his appreciation for receiving me on such short notice."
Something was slid across the table. Platinum, thickly stacked; a small fortune in and of itself.
Kef Mehrino then did his best not to salivate openly as he pocketed it.
"I accept your generous gift, and bid you welcome to Prospect 141." Mehrino said instead, "How may we trade this day?"
A projector inset into one of Eythan's many rings fizzled to life; depicting Captain Bravic's barge, the Severance Package. It rotated in the air before them.
"Your contractor is in possession of a Tier Zero find. A Warframe, to be precise; together with its original Operator. A unique find. We wish to make a bid for its acquisition; together with the original Liset and associated contents."
Kef's eyes narrowed to slits.
"I welcome your interest, Trader Eythan, but must ask: how is it you are aware of our activities? We only made sight of the discovery recently, and even then our activities were undertaken with the strictest measure of secrecy. Your appearance here is timely. Suspicious even, if you don't mind my saying."
Eythan shrugged, as a mountain might shrug.
"My employer has forbidden me to reveal trade secrets. It is sufficient to say that he has been seeking this asset for some time, and that it is of particular value to him. This is reflected in the degree of personal compensation on offer."
The deal began. An ancient ritual to a Corpus. It was what they lived for: the cut and thrust of hard commerce; battlefields delineated by thin margins and speculative minefields. Where victory came from ruthless brokerage, without hesitation or remorse. It was a dance of sorts, with prescribed steps and careful movements.
The only difference here was the vast sums potentially for the taking.
Kef Mehrino took a breath, calming his racing heart. He began.
"I see. My operatives have informed me that the asset is priceless; how would you quantify such compensation?"
The invitational prospectus. The hallmark of any shrewd trader. A deal lived or died based on the trader's ability to communicate the understanding of their asset, undercut the counter-party's offering and instead a submit a rationalised sum supported by counter-fact and market evidence.
Or at least, that's how it was meant to go.
For this Eythan fellow was no trader. He was scarcely even a card player. If he had the patience or acumen for business, it was evidently superseded by access to his client's spectacular wealth and a willingness to deploy it whenever circumstances required.
Which was why the next words out of his mouth immolated Corpus protocol.
"How about this colony, for starters?"
The only sound inside the transport ships was a reverberating drone, as the deck thrummed beneath steel-capped boots. The Resistance fighters packed thickly into the hold; the emergency lighting bathing them in a baleful red glow.
The fighters checked and rechecked weapons; turning and inspecting one another like preening apes; cinching a webbing strap here, or tightening a rebreather hose there. Private rituals were observed. Pendants were touched to the front of facemasks, or silent prayers said to forbidden gods long outlawed by Board decree. These were men and women from all walks of life; all shapes and sizes. Miners and scav-haulers; hucksters and arms dealers. Gang members, reformed and seeking to finally channel their directionless rage in a way that mattered.
Eclectic and varied, united only by common purpose. The Warframe stood apart from them all; silent and menacing in the back of the hold. Sara kept to herself, seemingly ensconced in some private meditation.
Hosk watched his people make ready; listening to the call and return over the com line. He had split his fellow Solaris operatives throughout the rank and file on the other transports. Both to bolster the spirits of the volunteers and to lessen the prospects of the command tier being decapitated by a single lost dropship.
Hosk was nervous. The Tenno's arrival had accelerated his schedule by several months, but this was it. In his bones this was it. Comprehensive forward planning stood to him. The timers were set, fireteams mobilised and sleeper agents activated.
Now all that was left was the hard part: the waiting.
Even so, a few words were called for. Expected, even.
Vanger Hosk opened the com line. His words piped through to each of the resistance fighters clumped in the transports, to the separate cells laying in wait across every tier in the colony. This deep in the city, the line was poor, yet somehow it worked; the rustling static granting his resolute, gravelly voice a certain gravitas. He kept it brief:
"Men and women of Prospect 141. This is it. The moment we've been waiting for all these years. No more will we be sold into servitude; bartered like cattle by soft hands proclaiming themselves to be our betters. Stick with your team leaders, remember your training. For the colony, for you and yours and all others to come - good luck."
There was no dramatic applause or wild cheers. The vast majority of the combatants were novices; lost in their own obsessive thought or too worried sick to react. Even so, there were nods throughout the hold; an occasional flashed thumbs up here and there. Hosk nodded. That would have to do.
He twisted his inner wrist upward, checking the timer mounted on his hard-suit.
Thirty minutes out.