"In the end, could there have been any other outcome?
The Empire was tired. Long had it grown complacent, arrogant and slothful; bloated from its own excess. Exhausted from endless days lived without meaning; free of hardship, bereft of purpose. We were not prepared to be challenged. From this collective lethargy sprung weakness. An ensnaring, insidious weed.
This is why we were created.
We, the House Eternal. The seed that survives the storm, long after the tree has fallen. Our agents are widespread, our roots deep. In time our efforts will bear fruit. We will rise again, and flourish.
There is so much to be done. The Grineer horde maraud freely, their numbers unchecked. The Merchant Guilds continue to gorge themselves on the war economy; swelling their coffers even as their people starve. The rest of our once-great civilisation live in squalor, eking out an existence throughout the scattered colonies.
We recognise the war that grips the Rail. The endless struggle between those scavengers who would bicker over our ashes; picking at the bones of what once was, and shall never be again. Unless we act.
We are the House Eternal: the ultimate contingency.
We shall not be found wanting."
- Vitruvian 2-2
Parson-Luk sweated as he helped Brakarr to his feet.
The Grineer rose shakily; almost bringing an entire shelf of equipment down on top of them as he clung to it for support. His breathing still carried a wet rasp that alarmed the Ostron. He was a simple hunter. There was only so much he could do.
Brakarr stumbled forward. His hand shot out, gripping the tarp that shrouded the object in the centre of the shed. The tarp wrenched free as Brakarr went down on his knee, heavily. The Ostron cursed him, fretting and fussing.
"You lumbering mule! I said take it slow!"
Brakarr didn't hear a word. He was too busy staring.
The hover-limo was a grand thing: with a snarling chrome bonnet, stencilled in the livery of one of the Corpus Guilds. Small faith flags adorn the bonnet of the car. There was visibly nothing wrong with, but for a tiny scratch on one of its doors.
Brakarr and Parson-Luk look at the limo. They look at each other.
The Ostron scratched his head, wincing.
"There's no way you'll fit, Surah."
Brakarr snorted. He punched his fist clean through the window.
There was a pealing squeal of tortured metal as Brakarr tore the roof of the car clean off.
The Grineer didn't so much climb aboard as flop gracelessly onto the back seat. Such was his weight that the limo groaned on its landing struts. Brakarr propped his feet up on the back of the front seat, his hands resting on the scabbed belly of his war rig. He gave the Ostron a victorious grin that was entirely lost behind his faceplate.
"Brakarr fit."
Parson-Luk scowled at him.
"Wait here."
The Ostron readied himself before he stepped out the door. He smoothly unclipped his earrings; tying his necklace and beads together so that which rattled was made silent. He mired grease on his high cheekbones, matting the skin and dulling its surface. Finally, he wrapped a scarf around his mouth.
Then he slipped into the smoke, and vanished into the gloom like a rumour.
Captain Theo Plun escalated his crew to a war footing. He crossed to the heart of the bridge, stepping up to his command throne. The armour rig encased his tattooed face in layer after layer of inter-locking plating. He was a tall and imposing figure. Had been bred for the role, in a very literal sense.
Encased by the box-like helmet, he looked even more imposing.
"I want those barges destroyed, immediately." Plun ordered. "Is the second wave prepared?"
"Standing by." His XO confirmed.
"Good. Prepare firing solutions."
There was a commotion in one of the crew pits. Plun rose to his feet, irritated by the distraction.
"New orders received, Captain!" one of the crewmen said, looking up from his console. "We're to hold position until further notice."
"We're in an active deployment!" Captain Plun thundered. "On whose authority?!"
As the answer came, Theo Plun was glad of the helmet. The colour drained from his face entirely.
He cleared his throat, adjusting his jumpsuit reflexively.
"I see. Very well. Tell the Board the message has been received, with thanks. All units, stand by until further notice."
The Tenno stood looking at each other.
The air was leaden, preciously brittle. Nobody spoke.
Telin's voice cut in over the intercom, making them jump.
"Uh, I hate to interrupt the secret meeting of the solemn Tenno association, but we've a problem here."
They hurried for the bridge.
The hunter lay low on the roof of the utility shed, all but invisible between the boxy air processors and depowered holo-boards. Parson-Luk played his spyglass from one side of the horizon to the other, in a measured sweep.
The Corpus army, while rattled, began to rally. They garrisoned the remains of Watch Control, which by this point more resembled a melted heap of slag than anything else. The hunter picked out crewmen looting work tools from the fallen Solaris that still littered the surface of the ziggurat. They hacked at the rock, trying to dig their way through to the central elevator shaft. The MOA formed a defensive perimeter, as their biological masters toiled with religious fervour. For all zeal, the rubble was going to hold them for some time. Parson-Luk frowned.
There was no sign of Isolde. He swept the spyglass upwards.
The barges then. The speed at which they fled the smoking wreckage told him enough.
That was their exit. Their best shot of getting out of here. Of getting home.
There was a sudden rumbling roar. Parson-Luk spun around.
"Ito-da!"
He rolled off the shed and took shelter right as the Orokin Barge's impulse drives surged to life. The shockwave sent a storm cloud of dust and billowing smoke washing over him. He choked and spluttered, eyes streaming.
All was darkness, swirling black flog. And shimmering through the murk, that gilded Barge, finally blazing to life.
Telin watched the beast rise up through the black smoke. A gilded brute, it stood full three times larger than the Severance. Majestic and proud, it oozed elegant menace. Telin had never seen anything of its like before.
Most tech he saw was of Corpus design: utilitarian, rectangular in aspect. Sophisticated certainly, but familiar. The Grineer wrecks they looted were altogether more cumbersome. Built for utilitarian war making, they tended to weather surface impact better. As alien and crude as they were, Telin understood them; they still seemed somewhat predictable.
This was something else entirely. It was ancient. An antique, a piece of ribbed art wrought from materials unknown. Its prow was an armoured hammerhead. There were no visible turrets of any kind.
That didn't reassure Telin. Not for the merest second.
"Tell me that's not something we need to worry about."
The look on Kael's face told him everything he needed to know.
"Right. Figures." Telin keyed the com. "Eyes up Sobil: that's not a friendly."
"What is these days?" Sobil's dry response crackled. "Standing by."
"Shields forward." Telin instructed.
For all the good it did.
Kael saw the glow first. Had seen it before, a lifetime before, in the debris field above the planet's surface. He shouted a warning. Pohld's hands jolted the controls.
There was a blinding light. Something slapped the Severance off-course. Everyone screamed. Pohld arms were all but wrenched from their sockets as he wrestled the controls. Across the ship, hatches blew inward. Pipes burst and flooded corridors with broiling steam or coolant that scalded flesh from bone. The energy cells overloaded; blowing the weapon crews clean across the room. Teico's console all but exploded, hissing sparks and fizzling.
The shield's collapsed in an instant. Engineering reports were a bloodbath of red system failures.
How the Severance remained airborne was a testament to Pohld's skill and the robustness of the ship's armour plating. Its surface was scorched, shorn of turrets and much of its starboard armour plating. It wobbled in the air, vomiting angry smoke in several places.
The shot had not been aimed at the Severance at all.
The Forward Transaction was simply gone. The air was filled with flaming shards of mangled debris that chunked down across the ruined Upper Tier like meteorites.
Telin clambered back into his command throne.
"Report!" he rasped.
Stren was unconscious, a wicked bump visibly swelling on his bleeding forehead. Kelpo took his post.
"Shields down, hull breaches on three decks." There was more data than he could process. "Mass casualties."
"Weapons?"
Kelpo just shook his head in despair.
"Power to engines. Pohld get us out of here!"
"Working on it Chief!"
Pohld gritted his teeth as he pushed the throttle. The engines audibly wheezed.
"Pohld!" Telin bristled. The Severance was barely limping through the air.
"Trying, Captain! Any faster and the core's going to blow!"
A voice cut in over the open broadcast line. The accent was clipped, as measured and polished as Kael and Isolde.
"To the crew of the Severance Package, power down immediately. Any further resistance will be summarily dealt with. There will be no further warnings."
Pohld glanced at Telin, sweating. Telin was stricken, his face a conflicted mask of frustration. They had been so close!
A heavy metal hand set itself on the back of his command throne.
Volt looked down at him.
"This is our fight, Telin Voss. You've done all you can. Land the ship."
Telin nodded, numbly. He hissed through his teeth.
"Put her down, Pohld. Teico, get me a casualty report. I want repair details moving asap."
Kelpo looked at Kael.
"I hope you know what you're doing, kid."
Volt looked at him, the Frame's domelike head impassive.
"So do I."
Volt moved quickly as the Severance began a trembling descent to the ruins of the Upper Tier.
The Liset lay abandoned in the main cargo hold, lost amidst so many other looted bits of salvage. Its systems were entirely dead, and the crews had stripped samples from the desiccated hull. Kael clambered aboard, all but marching to the chamber where the Somatic Link had encased him in a cryo-pod so many centuries before.
The link itself had been stripped for parts. The pod was forgotten, just another lump of metal the scavengers could trade for scrap. He had been in a hurry, when he fled the base on Mars.
He was in a hurry now, but there were some detours worth making.
The sword lay where it had been ever since he awoke, forgotten at the base of the cryo-pod.
Sohren's sword, glinting at the bottom of the casket. A priceless artefact, entirely overlooked in the carnage of the preceding days.
Volt picked it up, feeling its familiar weight in his hands.
Now, he was ready.
Now he could see this through.
The Severance kissed down in the open clearing; a sorry wreck.
The Corpus army watched them from afar, set on their dig. They had their orders.
The Orokin Barge's belly hatch opened as it kissed down a mere five hundred metres from the Severance. The architecture and motion of the landing gear was seamless, almost organic.
The Warframes stepped out onto the smoking battlefield, beneath the shadow of the ravaged Severance. The colony around them lay in ruin, a bystander in a war that long predated its existence.
The four Tenno paused, watching.
An honour guard files down the ramp of the Orokin Barge. They were golden warriors, dressed in splendid armour not seen in centuries. The Dax carried long halberds, adorned with the banners of The House Eternal. They lined the ramp, fanning out in a broad formation. It was bewildering to see so many of them still alive and together in a single place.
Dread and nostalgia fill the Tenno in equal measure.
"This is it." Isolde said. Mesa's targeting monocle was already logging distances, noting trajectories and windage.
"It is." Kael nodded.
"Tell me you have a plan beyond killing everything." Doric rolls Atlas' heavy shoulders with a click.
Isolde didn't reply.
"I have a plan." Sara announced.
They all looked at her. Mirage planted hands on her hips defensively.
"What? Don't give me that look. I do."
"Do share." Doric invites her with a gracious bow.
"Please." Isolde nodded coolly. "By all means."
Eythan Dax approached, flanked on both sides by a personal guard.
Sara spoke while they were out of earshot, her voice a conspiratorial whisper.
"We let them take us aboard. They bring us to their leader. We kill him. Then we kill the rest of them. Then take the ship, save the colony. Live forever as heroes. Simple."
"You do know that's just another variation of killing everything, don't you?" Doric observed.
"Works for me." Isolde shrugged.
"Hear, Hear." Kael murmured, watching the Dax come closer and closer. "Isolde, a favour; if I may."
"Yes, Kael?"
"Restrain yourself. I know you want blood. And blood is surely coming. But bide your time. There are lives at stake."
Mesa, tense as a coiled spring, nodded after a moment.
"You have my word. But when the time comes, make no mistake: that Dax is mine to bury, and mine alone."
"Very well."
Eythan Dax stopped a hundred feet from the Tenno.
The Tenno stepped forward to meet him. Physically the Warframes cut more imposing figures, though the Orokin guards did not lack size or muscle.
If Eythan Dax was intimidated in any way, it did not show. His armour had been cleaned, but the bruising from his duel with Vern was evident. His helmet was notably dented on one side.
Kael stepped forward. He could feel the hatred radiating from Isolde.
Better that he do the talking.
"Eythan Dax." Kael bowed slightly.
"Tenno Kael." The Dax returned the bow. "My Lord wishes me to inform you that any further resistance will result in the immediate destruction of your companions, and the subsequent and indeed total destruction of this colony from orbit. None will be spared. All will be ash."
"The Corpus won't like that." Doric remarked.
"This is our colony, not theirs." Eythan Dax countered coldly. "To do with as we see fit. And, I can assure you, my Lord does not possess a capacity for understatement."
"Your Lord will be a corpse, and you along with him." Isolde hissed.
"Isolde." Kael warned reproachfully.
Eythan Dax smiled coldly, bemused at the exchange.
"I'm sure. But first, a bit of housekeeping." Eythan Dax extended a hand, looking at Isolde brazenly. "My sword?"
Isolde didn't budge.
Kael looked at her.
Mesa begrudgingly cast the Dax's sword on the ground before her. It snapped smoothly up into the Dax's hands with a magnetic hum, then clicked back into its sheath.
"Splendid. Now, if you'll follow me."
He turned on his heel, and led them toward the waiting ramp.
Telin and the others watched helplessly on the bridge as the Tenno disappeared into the belly of the ancient ship, surrounded on all sides by warriors of The House Eternal.