Written by my friend, and one of the last few we ever got done. I tried to edit this to an acceptable level, though I'm not sure how well I did. This one wasn't one of my favorites, but I think by this point my friend was starting to lose interest and just trying to get as much done as he could before he completely gave up on it. The game had changed so much by the time we got to this point that we were both getting a little bit derailed, so yeah, it's pretty understandable in my opinion. Still makes me feel a little sad to know we'll never finish it though.
"Ugh, this suit is riding up. Do I have to wear this thing?" Stock adjusted the body suit he was forced to wear while the relay. Reya said they were here for a job and to pick up supplies. She also said that he couldn't wear his Orokin marine uniform, it would be a great way to get killed upon walking into the relay. A few tenno where still a little bitter he guessed. He was with Reya's party which consisted of the captain, Boreas, Anya, Tess and his kubrow pup Janus. He figured it would be good to take Janus out to see the world so she would be more friendly to other tenno.
"You look fine, stop fidgeting," Reya said with a slight growl. The body suit was a one-piece grey with a hood and face mask with a visor that hid his facial features. Upon first glance he looked like every other post-human that wandered this universe, albeit slightly taller and slightly more muscular.
"It's rubbing all the wrong places, I think you gave me the wrong size," Stock complained.
"It's a one size fits all, and it highlights your… um… exciting features," Anya giggled.
"Oh come on, Anya!" Stock groaned.
Anya and Tess giggled and started whispering to each other, and he could have sworn he even heard Reya snicker.
They walked down the ramp and were greeted by a tenno manning a terminal who logged in their names, what ship they were from, and their reason for being at this relay. Stock was registered under the name Tau to further mask the fact that he was of Orokin origin.
Stock looked around the hanger, it was an open space with several platforms that stretched into the distance, and beyond that he could see open space. The whole hanger bay was massive, he even noticed a few other drop ships from the Harbinger docked nearby.
They walked through a security checkpoint, then on into the main relay. The relay took Stock's breath away, the central chamber was a massive cavern with a Rhino frame carved from crystal. A plaque at the base of the statue denoted he was some kind of hero. Stock could only read a small portion of the text due to still learning the post Orokin common language and writing.
"Ah Reya welcome! I see you have brought a guest. Is this the Orokin marine my sources mentioned you have obtained?" A man approached them, he was wearing silver grey robes and some kind of head dress that was in the shape of a triangle and hid most of his features above his nose.
"Baro, it is good to see you again. How is it you always seem to know of our actions? Even when we go to great lengths to keep them to ourselves?" Reya replied in her tenno dialect. Stock was able to pick up some of it, but what he could not was translated and displayed as subtitles on his visor.
"My sources are my own; now shall we get down to business? I would very much like to acquire this Marine for my… collection." Baro interlaced his fingers together.
Reya stepped in front of Stock and growled, "He's not for sale like some slave. He is part of my crew and he will remain that way. To be honest with you Baro, I don't trust some of those you do business with."
Baro pressed on, "Well, I don't do business with shady characters. Well, other than you and your crew that is. How about this, I will give you a good deal for him, after we will be considered square after that last job I hired you for, of which I only received half the cargo."
Anya was about to step forward and give him a piece of her mind but Stock beat her to it. "HEY! Can you understand me?" he demanded. Janus stepped forward and growled. Baro pursed his lips and replied with a simple, "Yes."
"Then answer me this, do you see a price tag on me? I sure as hell don't. And trust me, I may be the last marine but I sure as hell am too much for you to handle. Every so often when I get irritated, I tend to… shoot things. On a whim." Stock raised an eyebrow.
"Very well Reya, but we will need to sit down and figure out what to do about the bit of cargo you owe me," Baro said.
"That would be fine and all if I actually did owe you more cargo. Because I seem to remember I delivered all that we recovered," Reya replied. Before Baro could reply Reya pushed past him and up the stairs.
"Who was that asshole and what was that about?" Stock asked Reya.
"That 'asshole' is one of our business associates," Reya explained, "We occasionally take jobs from him, usually consisting of acquiring this object or that. The last one we did he seems to think we botched. He came across some information detailing an Orokin weapon stash and sent us in to retrieve it. Well we got some counter intelligence of our own that suggested he intended to double cross us by sending another tenno clan to hijack the stash once we retrieved it. Which was unfortunate for them, because we killed them all. And then only sold half the stash to him, saying that is all we recovered. We then sold the other half to the man you are about to go see. He owes us for that weapon shipment. Tess, go take Anya and Stock to Darvo's, then meet me in the cantina, I need to meet these people interested in hiring us for a job."
"Aye-aye captain!" Tess gave a mock salute and ushered Stock and Anya along while Boreas lagged behind, briefly talking to Reya but soon followed.
"Oh man, this is going to be great! So, just as a forewarning, Darvo is a corpus defector who works with a grineer defector… named Clem. The only reason why Reya even agrees to do business with Darvo is because Clem is a bit… special," Tess told them, "He's also saved Reya's life personally."
"So, when you say special, you mean..?" Anya asked.
"I mean he's special," Tess repeated, then she elaborated, "Like, he's not like other grineer, he's a bit shorter, and brave as hell. Also not all there mentally. I honestly think he might be a bit insane too."
"Well this should be interesting," Stock muttered. Upon taking an elevator of light up to the second floor they walked through a door and into a shop crammed with what Stock could only describe as junk. Ammunition lay strewn everywhere, shelves where crammed with weapons of all shapes and sizes. There were also various parts for various objects.
There were a few tenno just browsing around who turned to look at them when they entered. Tess squealed, "Clem!" and ran up to the short grineer lancer. The two chattered back and forth for a bit while Boreas led Stock and Anya up to Darvo.
"We want the last bit of our portion of the shipment," Boreas told Darvo flat out.
"Ok, but after this we are done. I owe your captain nothing more," Darvo replied, giving Boreas a stern look, "OK everyone, shops closed! Come back later! Get the out!" Darvo started ushering the other tenno out, one attempted to ask him about an object but he just snatched it from their hand and tossed it behind him before pushing the tenno out and closing and locking the door.
"Sucks to be them, we just interrupted their shopping," Anya whispered to Stock.
"I don't think they were shopping," Stock whispered back.
"What are you thinking?" Anya asked.
"If I'd have to take a guess, I'd say they are either watching this Darvo guy or they're his body guards. If you noticed some were looking our way when Boreas was talking with Darvo. When they left they just dropped what they were doing and walked out like they had nothing to do here and had more important places to be."
"Think they are working for that Baro guy?" she wondered.
"Maybe, I think it would be worth mentioning to Reya later," Stock said, "Maybe she would know."
At that moment Clem came from the back room lugging several green crates and dropping them in front of the tenno, then he turned back to get more. Boreas and Darvo opened several of them and Boreas turned to Anya and Stock and said, "Go ahead and pick your weapons of choice."
Stock looked inside a crate and picked up a braton prime and a latron prime, weighing both in his hands before tossing the latron back in the crate and picking the braton prime and shouldering it. Satisfied he walked over to one of the shelves and grabbed a box of rifle ammunition, then went back to rummaging around in the crates until he found a lex prime pistol. Satisfied, he looked over to see Anya holding two boltos then shrugging and holstering them both. He noticed she had kept her Vectis sniper rifle.
"Satisfied?" Boreas asked Stock and Anya, who both nodded.
"Good," he said, "Darvo, If you can, have our portion sent to our ship, we will have our weapons master meet you there to load up these crates. After this we are square, those are words coming directly from Reya."
"Good, pleasure doing business. Now if you will, please?" he gestured to the door.
They said their good byes and left, heading towards the cantina.
"Hey, I'm going to go find Ira… for some uh, training," Tess said before wandering off.
"Hey, take my mutt with you!" Stock barked after Tess.
"What was that about?" Boreas asked.
"Don't know." Stock played dumb.
"The investigation that Reya is conducting?" Boreas asked. Stock and Anya looked at Boreas.
"How did you..?" Anya started.
"I'm not the ship's XO for nothing," Boreas replied, "Let me guess, Talos, Ira and I are the three prime suspects?"
They had no choice but to answer. "Yes," Stock told him, "She wanted me to keep an eye on you and Anya to keep an eye on Talos; Tess has Ira."
"Thought so, she's right to be concerned," the frost said quietly, "Someone is leaking our information. I'd say it's not me but, that's what a rat would say. So, I won't say anything at all."
After that they continued on in silence until they reached the cantina. Boreas instructed them to sit close to the captain but not to make it apparent that they were with the harbinger, even going as far as to have Anya turn her clan emblem on her shoulder off. They split up with Boreas going to sit at a nearby table with another tenno stock recognized from the ship, and with Stock and Anya sitting at a table near Reya's. She was sitting across from three corpus, and seemed to be deep in discussion with them, she would occasionally frown and then speak to them or consult a tablet she was holding.
Stock looked around the room and noticed every single table surrounding Reya's was filled with Corpus. They had drinks in front of them but didn't seem that focused on drinking them. And surrounding them were various tenno. It took Stock a second to realize they were also from the Harbinger, but with their clan emblems also turned off.
Stock sat with his back to a wall facing Reya's table, with Anya sitting on his left facing the door to the cantina. "What do you think this is about?" Stock asked Anya quietly.
"I don't know, but I don't think it's good," Anya said, "I have a bad feeling about this. From what Reya mentioned they asked her to come alone."
"And she didn't," Stock stated.
"No, but they don't know that either… yet," Anya replied.
All of a sudden there was a bustle, Reya raised her voice and the three corpus she was doing business with stood up along with all the corpus surrounding her. They all pulled out guns and pointed them at her. Stock reached for his new pistol but felt Anya's hand clamp down on his hand. She was using her iron vice grip again. He looked at her and she ever so slightly shook her head. Even though she had her helmet on he could guess her facial expression was serious but would say to wait.
"It was foolish of you to actually come alone! You will agree to our terms or else you won't be leaving here alive!" the corpus crewman in the middle said.
Reya calmly put down her tablet and stood up, leaning closer to the corpus who spoke, smiled and said, "Who said I came alone?"
With that the cantina erupted in a clatter of weaponry being upholstered. Anya let go of Stock's hand, allowing him to draw his pistol and take aim at the nearest corpus, while Anya kicked her chair away from the table shouldering her sniper rifle and aimed at another corpus on the far side. Stock noticed Boreas and the tenno he was with snuck up behind the two corpus on each side of the lead corpus and put knives to their throats.
Reya's face hardened, "Now here's how this is going to work, yes you can shoot me, you can even probably kill me. But do you know what will happen then? My crew here will kill you all. Then my crew aboard my ship, will destroy your ship and take what's left of your cargo and sell it to the lowest bidder." With that she turned her tablet around to face the corpus leader showing, a corpus ship in the cross hairs of the Harbinger. "And after we are done with that, we will move onto your families, we will wipe each and every single one of them out of existence, including your young daughters." She swiped her finger across the screen to show three young girls playing in the snow. "And after all of that, we will forcefully take over your businesses and intentionally run them into the ground, you will be the laughing stock of the Corpus Empire for your failings. Or, you can sit down, and talk this out like civilized adults and agree to my terms. Trust me I have been in this business far longer than you have, I have done business with your grandfather, and I can guarantee you, if you continue down this path, you won't like it. Your best option is to agree to my terms."
The corpus business leader turned white. A million expressions crossed his face at once before finally settling on fear. He glanced around the room and saw the tenno who outnumbered his crew. He gave in and sat down, motioning for his corpus guard to stand down. With that the standoff was over. The tenno holstered their weapons and turned back to their own business like nothing ever happened. Within minutes Reya stood up to shake the corpus leader's hand but he just stood up and walked out with his guard. Reya sighed and then announced, "Well that was eventful, drinks are on me!" The tenno erupted in cheers.
The last thing Stock remembered before blacking out was Anya ordering both of them their drinks and Boreas coming to sit with them and telling them some story about how he faced off against a squad of incompetent grineer lancers, clearly drunk. He didn't remember Tess and Anya carrying him back to the ship and he didn't remember the rest of the night. When he awoke his head was pounding, he was sleeping on the floor using the doggy bed as a pillow, and as he glanced up at his own bed he saw Anya was curled up next to Janus, who opened up one eye upon hearing Stock stir. He looked at the kubrow before muttering about how spoiled she was and got up to take a shower and then find some food.