"Push to keep the dark from coming…"
- Solaris work song, unattributed
There was only two of them in the Boardroom now. The staffers had fled; quietly vanishing as the Solaris advance bit deeper and deeper into the Watch's perimeter. The room was quiet and still. The shelling had stopped, which meant only one thing.
"They're at our doorstep now." Kren Maruk took a final sip of his water. He set the glass down gently.
The Watch had fought admirably. The Solaris had paid for every step taken with their lives, yet there was only so much his men could do. The Solaris fought like demons possessed; mechanised faces screaming blue murder as they threw themselves up the slope. Scrap metal and torn bodies heaped the approach, but for all their discipline, the Watch could not hold out in the face of the rebels and their wretched Tenno champions.
The Solaris spilled through the firing lines; raking down crewmen with savage arcs of their hammers; as arcs of electricity lanced out and fried fleeing crewmen; who fell shrieking and thrashing.
Maruk crossed to the Boardroom table. Kef Mehrino had emerged from beneath it; bleary eyed; eyes wired and wild in terror. The Director stank of booze, as he blinked up at Maruk helplessly.
"What do we do?!"
Kren Maruk shrugged, rummaging for the case he had brought with him when he first arrived.
He set the case down on the table. Personal effects, the various little trinkets he accrued over a long contract. He had sent for it some time ago.
It contained little. There was his first Flux rifle and helmet, from his days touring the Rail with the Corpus Navy. A hologram of him and his old war buddies; hunkering triumphantly over a downed Grineer dropship. A gem he had found on the cold surface of Europa; polished to a fine lustre after a long day's patrol.
It also contained a pistol, an antique slug thrower; presented with at his last promotion, in recognition of lifelong service.
He bolted the helmet on, his lined face disappearing behind the slit red visor.
The pistol he gave to Mehrino. He kept it brief:
"You wanted the colony. It's yours now, I expect; though for how long remains uncertain. Defend it, or don't. Try not to let them take you alive."
With that the old commandant started for the door.
"Where are you going?"
"I have been a soldier all my life, Director. I will die as one. For the Void, for my corpus."
With that Kren Maruk opened the Boardroom door, and stepped out.
Alone, Kef Mehrino picked up the pistol, hands quaking as he studied it.
Kael roared at the Solaris to take cover. He ducked back.
The electric shield he carried dissipated; fizzling out with a descending pop. He had pushed his Frame as he could; channeling the power of the Void to the point of exhaustion. Hosk and a clump of Solaris rebels were still with him, hell-bent on reaching the summit.
Sara's voice was in his ear.
"Kael, get inside." He could barely hear her over the keening shrill of her Cestra. "We need to get the auto-factories offline if we're gonna win this fight."
"Understood."
Volt turned to Vanger Hosk. The old man looked as though he had aged fifteen years in as many minutes.
"I need a way inside."
Hosk nodded, flashing a hand signal at two of the larger Solaris beside him. They were coolant workers by trade; burly men, whose boxy robotic faces stood at odds with their sloping shoulders. The war had found them with a new trade.
The Solaris slapped demolition charges on a sealed doorway; yelling at their comrades to fall back.
The charges detonated in an eruption of venting smoke and chunking masonry. Coughing from clogged filters, they flashed Kael a sooty thumbs up.
The Warframe dove into the dun smoke; racing for the heart of the fortress.
Hosk roared at the Solaris around him.
"The rest of you; with me! To the summit!"
High above the colony, removed from the murderous conflict that tore the Upper Tier apart, The Severance Package remained tethered to the Forward Transaction; its hook lines still gouging deep into its sister ship's belly.
The two ships had drifted some distance away from the core of the fighting, and now floated alone in the sky; their plating scalded from the merciless brawl that had brought both barges to the very brink.
An uneasy partnership developed. Sobil's crew, cowed by the number of casualties visited upon them by the Tenno, and the factual realisation that their quarry was far too dangerous for them to contain, settled into an uneasy truce with the very crew they were trying to murder mere moments before.
Profit could wait for another day. Right now, survival was everything.
Besides, Sobil's men had no intention of inviting further reprisal from the Void Demon, absent or otherwise.
The Severance's crew for their part accepted their assistance with gruff pragmatism. Scores would be settled later. Right now it was business as usual. Get the ship repaired. Get it moving.
Kelpo watched the two crews work together; Sobil directing his men as Stren pointed out the best means of extricating the savage javelins embedded within the hull. Grav-tethers remained in place; as both crews worked in tandem to undo the damage.
Severed connections were soldered; worn plating welded shut or cut free entirely; used instead to patch further holes throughout their respective hulls. A chain of command was established, with the crew of the Severance ultimately taking charge of the two ships. When asked who was in command, Teico and Pohld had looked at each other and shrugged, before pointing at Telin in unison.
Telin Voss, an unlikely captain, swallowed inwardly, but did his best to act the part; deferring to Stren and the other veterans wherever possible. HWK-44 wobbled in the air behind him, offering its assistance wherever it could.
Sobil politely inquired as to Bravic's whereabouts. Telin wasn't sure what to say. Kelpo simply pointed to the melted deck plating around the vicinity of the command throne, stony faced.
Telin got the measure of Sobil quickly. He was a careful man, good on detail. He was also a worrier.
"You realise we'll be hunted for this now. The both of us." Sobil stroked at his moustache thoughtfully, "The Exchange's reputation for punishing failure is legendary."
"We'll deal with them when the time comes. Right now we need to retrieve Kael."
"Kael?"
"The kid… uh, Tenno."
Sobil paled.
"I see."
"Relax, Sobil; if the Exchange does come knocking, I'd rather Kael answer the door."
The shrill of a proximity alarm cut their conversation short.
"What do we have?" Telin asked, crossing the room. The view from the Severance's bridge answered his question immediately.
The dropships descended from the atmosphere; hurtling in with all speed.
"Multiple contacts!" Teico announced. "Corpus Navy; rapid descent!"
"How many?" Telin asked, stepping forward.
"Uh.. sixteen. No wait… second group coming in." Teico blinked. "A third."
"Void's Teeth." Telin breathed, as the sky filled with streaking engines; too many to count.
The Board permitted many things in the wider pursuit of profit. Mergers, fire-sales; even civil war, on seldom occasion; hostile takeovers in the most literal description.
But open insurgency was another matter. The Solaris would not be permitted to defy the Board's authority any longer. They would be broken; put to the sword; crushed in both body and spirit: their survivors mechanised and sold into the most punitive form of life-debt imaginable. From the shipyards of Velasco to the debt-interment colonies of Prospectus and Fortuna; the message would be heard, far and wide.
A singular response, one that burned in the minds of the Solaris and etched in their collective memory, reminding them of their place for generations to come.
Full scale planetary assault.
"What the hell is that sound?!" Neera asked.
Vern looked up, lip twitching in a grimace.
Brakarr boomed a challenge; mashing an armoured fist against his war rig. He unshipped his rotary cannon, pre-emptively cycling the rotor.
Parson-Luk simply stared. He had seen ships and go, flitting in and out of Cetus. This was something quite different. This was a whole new level of war.
"No time." Vern hissed. Neera wasn't sure whether he was referring to the colony or their present circumstances.
"Move!" Vern barked at them, a startling degree of urgency in his voice. "Run!"
They fled for the ziggurat, as keening engines filled the sky above.
Mirage looked up to the sky, distracted by the drone of descending engines. Ice flooded Sara's veins.
They were out of time.
"Hosk. Get your people out of here."
"—we're close! So close!"
"Hosk: Look up."
Hosk turned on the steps. His eyes widened in horror.
The first wave of the Board's forces touched down in the very landing zones the Solaris themselves had carved into the Upper Tier; disgorging men and material in volumes far beyond the Solaris' means to openly contend.
Limitless resources, endless control. The Board's power was absolute. A finger of despair stirred in his brain.
He had led the men and women around him to certain death.
A calmness took over Hosk. The summit was just ahead. Kael had vanished into the heart of the citadel, dead set on burying the auto-manufactories' control source; entirely unaware that for all the good it might do, another legion of proxies was set to wash the insurgents away.
Hosk's own objective lay just beyond reach.
Or perhaps not.
As Kael laid waste to the inner halls of the temple, the number of Corpus still manning the summit had thinned considerably. It would be some time before the Board's army reached them.
They had a window; a precious window, to make all the difference.
"For the Solaris! For freedom!"
Hosk charged the steps; he and those reckless few.
Statistically, the rebellion should have ended there and then. They were outnumbered. They were downhill, mercilessly exposed to the flow of bolts that snapped down and bit deep. Bodies fell.
It didn't matter. The Solaris committed. Bullets rang out, clear and true. Soldiers of the Watch fell back, stunned by that desperate, defiant charge that would echo in folklore; immortalised in the forbidden songs, sung by the surviving workers long after Hosk's passing. What followed was a frenzied clash.
The details would be forgotten, remembered solely by this account, and this account alone.
Hosk alone reached the summit unscathed. How fate had spared him from the merciless fire not even the Void itself knew. He stumbled when he reached the top step, his legs giving out. Hosk fell in an undignified sprawl; a vice-like cramp shooting through his leg.
He was alone on the summit, surrounded on all sides by heaped bodies; Solaris and Corpus alike.
Ahead was the Boardroom. A single glass doorway, framed by onyx stone.
The door opened. A Corpus soldier charged out.
A single shot rang out. Kren Maruk fell without so much as a murmur; a hole burned through his chest.
Hosk looked back at the figure who had reached the height of the summit with him.
It was a young Solaris boy, the same one who had stumbled and sank beneath the coolant in the march to the transports, from what seemed like a lifetime ago. His tattooed face was filthy and he was bleeding; a searing plasma shot having fused his shoulder to the environment suit around it. He had been with Hosk every step of the way; from every street corner to makeshift trench. Every bloodied step.
The boy collapsed to his knees, ragged with exhaustion; delirious. Hosk went to help him, but the boy flapped his hand, waving him onward. Hosk nodded. There was no time.
Hosk pulled himself forward, hopping forward. His rifle was spent. He cast it aside. He entered the Boardroom; looking around. It seemed clear.
Venger Hosk hastened for the access console at the head of the Boardroom table.
Beneath it, Kef Mehrino shivered in terror, the pistol clenched in his hands.
Isolde saw the descending dropships, turning her back on them.
She felt for the rebels, in truth. But this was not her war. The Corpus would continue to brutalise their own people, as they had for generations. Their time would come, eventually.
For now, there were greater tyrannies to confront.
She marvelled at the splendour of the Orokin ship, even as a repulsive shiver coursed through her spine.
Eythan Dax awaited her on the Landing pad.
There were no other guards, or enemies.
"You came alone."
Isolde nodded, hands clasped at the small of her back; back straight, her chin high and proud.
Eythan Dax nodded, pleased; his voice a rumbling purr.
"Good."
He started toward her; one hand on the hilt of his nikana. Armoured cleats clanked on steel decking.
Isolde watched him draw ever closer, face utterly expressionless. Her hair blew freely in the wind.
Clasped in her hands was the single kunai, silver and sharp.