I wrote this one. I think it's the last one I wrote for this story, definitely the last one I remember writing at any rate. There's only one that got written after this one, the rest are all severely unfinished drafts that just plain aren't polished enough to upload. This whole story could probably use a bit of tweaking, and if anyone wanted to help me give it a go I wouldn't say no. Until then, thanks for reading everyone.
"Any idea where we're going on this one?" Stock asked as he and Anya headed toward the hanger.
Anya turned to look at him and smiled, "Reya said we're going to be intercepting a Corpus military vessel. Got a tip, they're planning to hit one of the tenno relays. The leaders of the Clans' Meet called us in."
"We're that good, huh?" Stock quipped.
"Well, apparently Reya's crew is," Anya laughed, "They asked for Reya specifically, so she'll be with us on this go and she mentioned to me earlier that she asked Talos to join us as well."
"She certainly didn't pull any punches for this one," he commented.
"Hah, in more ways than one," Anya said, "I've trained with Talos before myself, he does not go easy on anybody. Just wait 'til you see what he does when he actually wants to kill something."
"I can imagine," Stock replied, "I still have the bruises from my last training session with him."
"You'll get the hang of it," she smiled, "I thought my ass was going to be flat before I was through landing on it when he trained me."
Stock pretended to inspect her rear before declaring, "Nope, looks pretty much perfect to me, not flat at all."
"And they wondered why I fell for you," she giggled.
"You two keep pouring on the syrup and you'll drown your pancakes," Reya interrupted as she cut between them and strode up the ramp into the liset, "Hurry it up, Talos is almost finished with the preflight checklist."
"Yes, the sooner we embark the sooner you two will cease this ridiculous banter you seem determined to engage in at every opportunity," Thoth said before floating up the ramp ahead of them. Anya was sure there would have been a sniff thrown in there for emphasis if he'd been a human or a tenno.
They laughed and followed him up, then once inside the five of them settled in for the short flight to the corpus ship. That was one other reason that Reya's crew had been the logical choice to investigate this report. They had already been in the sector, so it wouldn't take them more than a few extra hours to look into the matter.
"I thought the report said they planned to attack the relay," Anya said as they studied the corpus vessel from the outside at a safe distance.
They had caught up to it about five minutes before and were now trying to determine the best way of getting inside. It was running with no lights however, and after a quick scan Thoth informed them that the shields and fuel reserves were oddly low. It also appeared to have already been through a battle, with enemies who made heavy use of explosive weaponry. It had left a thin but noticeable trail of debris in its wake as it slowly drifted toward the tenno relay orbiting Pluto.
"Do you think one of the other clans got to them first?" Stock wondered.
"That damage wasn't done by anything we tenno regularly use," Talos replied.
"If I may," Thoth spoke, "I've finished running a more in-depth scan, and it appears that the explosives used were crude but high damage. This indicates that a grineer battle squadron is responsible for the state of the vessel."
"The corpus and the grineer are allies, why would they attack each other?" Stock asked.
"That's what we're going to find out," Reya replied, "Everyone keep your guard up, we have no idea what we might find in there."
"The shielding is weak enough that we should be able to enter the docking bay without incident so long as we enter slowly, but strong enough that Sergeant Woodstock should not suffer any ill effects from the vacuum," Thoth informed them.
"Good," Reya said, "Talos, if you would?"
He nodded and took the controls while the rest of them gathered their gear, giving it a final inspection as he brought the liset into the corpus battle cruiser's docking bay and set it down. Once Thoth confirmed that the landing area was secure they disembarked and entered the cruiser.
It looked worse on the inside than it had on the outside, bodies and debris lay everywhere and there were still fires smoldering all over the place as a result of the battle. The farther they went, the more destruction they found, but that eventually began to give way to the pristine grey steel and soft blue lighting the corpus were fond of. They soon became concerned however, they had yet to encounter a single living thing and by that point they felt they should have been challenged.
"Does something smell… off, to anyone else?" Stock finally asked, after having noticed a musty, almost rotten odor several minutes before.
"Now that you mention it, there is a smell in here, which is weird, because even the cell bays on corpus ships are normally completely sterilized," Anya said.
"Captain? You may want to come take a look at this," Talos said, turning back to look at them after opening a room.
"Good… God…" Reya breathed as she and Anya stepped into the room, followed by Stock and Thoth, with Talos bringing up the rear, "Thoth, analysis please."
"Scanning," the cephalon said, then he delivered the results, "It appears they were studying some sort of virus which manifested shortly after the attack by the grineer. There is not enough information in this particular database however for me to generate a complete profile of the contagion."
"What I'm more concerned by is the fact that these two men were just left here and they've obviously been dead for a while. No one with any sense leaves a contaminated body to rot in a med room on a ship of any kind, you run the risk of spreading a potential plague to your whole crew," Stock pointed out, "So where is everyone?"
"The ship's central computer will be on the bridge," Reya said, "Thoth should be able to access their main database from there and tell us what exactly happened here."
"Whatever it was, I don't think they ever planned to attack the relay," Anya said as they left the room.
"That still might have been the plan, we can't rule anything out just yet," Reya told her, "The captain's log will tell us more."
The farther they went the worse shape the ship was in. Every surface was coated in a greasy, foul smelling film, and soon they were finding corpses lying haphazardly about, left wherever they'd fallen. The internal structure of the ship seemed to be failing as well. More than a few times they'd been forced to either leap out of the way of falling debris in order to avoid being crushed, or to scramble off of a section of floor as it gave way and fell, sometimes all the way to the bottom of the ship.
They followed the ship's transport rails for a while, ending up making several detours before finally finding the route that would most likely take them to the bridge. After following it for some time they came to what appeared to have been a railway hub at one point, but was now a jumbled mess of collapsed rails and empty space over an apparently long drop. It was impossible to tell how deep the hole was, since just a very short distance below their current level the air was thick with a red tinged fog.
"Which way now?" Anya asked softly, looking around at the destroyed transit hub.
Reya pointed to a rail that extended from a tunnel on the far side of the junction. It only extended part way across. The rail was twisted into an odd shape and melted where it had been blasted in two. One freight car hung precariously over the void, trapped in place by the melted steel at the end of the rail. They made their way over to it, and Talos inched his way out onto the end of the segment on their side of the gap.
"This side is solid," he informed them.
"Thoth, scan the other side, please," Reya requested. Thoth floated away toward the other side, scanning for the structural integrity of the rail, then the platform it protruded from.
"It is stable for now, but I would not advise putting the weight of more than one warframe at a time on the rail, and I doubt the freighter car would hold any of you," he told them.
"I could test the rail," Stock offered.
"Are you certain you want to do that?" Reya asked, "That looks like an awfully long drop."
"I'll be fine," he grinned, "I don't have the weight of a warframe, so I figure the most that will happen is it'll bend a little. That way, we find out if we need to make a detour, and none of you get dropped down the hole."
"Do you want me to give you a teleport?" Anya asked.
"Nah. It's not that far," he assured her.
"Alright then, just be careful, yeah?" she said softly.
"I'm always careful," he feigned offense.
"Yeah, just like you never cause incidents," Anya snorted. He laughed then walked onto the rail Talos had just backed off from. "You're absolutely sure you don't want a teleporter?" Anya questioned.
"I'm sure," he replied, "Save your energy, if the corpus figure out we're here you might need it."
Anya couldn't argue with that logic so she simply nodded and watched as Stock walked to the end of the rail segment. He measured the gap a couple of times, then backed up, took a running start and jumped. He ended up missing the end of the rail though, landing instead on the freighter car. It groaned under his weight and Stock stopped moving immediately, keeping absolutely still until he was sure it wouldn't move another inch, then he carefully stood up. There was a loud sound of steel grinding on steel, then the rail bent over several inches causing the car to shift.
"Oh shit," Stock said, then as he dropped to his knees and grabbed the car with both hands the whole contraption tumbled into the hole.
"Connor!" Anya yelped, scrambling to the edge and looking down, "Are you alright?!" She couldn't see a thing.
"I'm fine!" he called back, "Maybe a new bruise or two but I'll live."
"Hang on, I'll get you out of there," she said.
"No, no," he said, "I'll meet you guys on the bridge."
"Are you sure?" Anya asked, "What if you run into the corpus or something?"
"I promise, I'll be ok," he assured her.
"Take Thoth with you," Reya instructed, sending the sentinel down into the hole after him, "He can at least watch your back, and his platform has been modified to interface with just about every computer system there is."
"Thanks," Stock called, "I'll meet you on the bridge."
It didn't take the tenno long at all to clear the gap, and soon they were ready to continue on to the bridge. "I sure hope he'll be alright," Anya sighed as they left the transit hub.
"That's why I sent Thoth with him," Reya said, "That sentinel Thoth is currently using as his mobile platform has some pretty heavy weaponry as well as being able to hack most computer systems."
Stock had to admit that despite assuring Anya that he didn't need a rescue, he was rather relieved to have Thoth with him. He supposed he should have just asked her to come with him, but he knew that he and to be able to at least somewhat keep up with the tenno if he wanted Reya to bring him on missions often. So, he had declined Anya's predictable offer to get him out of the hole, and he knew that he would probably have declined if she had offered to come with him.
It didn't take him long to discover though that the lower levels of the ship seemed to be in slightly better shape than the central and upper levels, and he eventually asked Thoth for a scan.
"It appears that your hypothesis is correct, Sergeant Woodstock," Thoth said, "The lower decks of the ship seem to be more heavily reinforced than the central and upper decks. There is one anomaly however. The reinforcements are not metallic in nature or even manmade."
"What are they then?" Stock wanted to know.
"They appear to be fashioned from some type of biological composite, but it's like nothing I am familiar with at this moment," Thoth replied.
Stock just nodded. He'd noticed that, quite apart from the horrendous smell, the floor was slightly moist and squished in some places when he walked across it. Another thing was the disgusting film coating everything was so thick in some places that it made just standing a chore.
"How near are we to the bridge?" Stock finally asked after silently plodding through the mess for close to fifteen minutes without either of them saying a word.
Thoth took another scan of the ship and answered, "The damage to the ship has made it difficult to determine, but I believe we must go up a total of three decks, then there are approximately four sections we must traverse."
"Right, I must have fallen farther than I thought," Stock muttered, then he said, "Alright, let's find a way back up there and get to the bridge. We have to get the data you've collected to Reya, and I'm starting to not trust this place. I keep hearing noises that sound like something's moving around down here."
"Really, sergeant, my scans have yet to detect a single living organism aboard this vessel besides you and the tenno, much less anything that can move under its own volition," Thoth protested, "It's likely just your own steps echoing off the walls."
"My boots don't make a sliding, squishing noise every time I take a step," Stock pointed out as he and the sentinel continued on down the corridor. A few minutes later they found a set of stairs that took them up two decks. The corridor from there was relatively straight, but they still had to find some way of getting onto the deck above them. Thoth scanned again, then lead the way down a hallway that branched off to their right.
The hallway was slightly claustrophobic, Stock could reach out and touch both walls with his hands and still have his arms bent at the elbows. A few minutes later the hallway opened out into a large storage bay and Stock took a look around. The red emergency lights were on, giving everything in the bay a crimson red tinge except for the few work stations which were still bathed in the soft blue of normal corpus lighting. Another thing he noticed was that the sounds of movement seemed louder in this room, so much so that they were echoing off the walls. He started toward the far end of the room with Thoth trailing behind, then they both stopped dead as they heard a strange groaning noise followed by a loud squeak that rose in pitch and volume until it was an ear-splitting shriek.
"Thoth..?" Stock said nervously, "I don't like the sound of that…"
"My auditory sensors have not detected a sound like that in… centuries," Thoth responded, "Not since the tenno… Oh my. Sergeant, we should leave. Now."
"Don't have to tell me twice," Stock said, following as Thoth lead the way toward the elevator. Nothing happened for some time however, and Stock eventually asked, "Evidently those sounds mean something to you, Thoth, can I ask what's going on?"
"As the only human currently on the mission, I suppose you do have the right to know," Thoth said, "If my theory is correct, then what we are witnessing here is an outbreak of the infestation."
"Infestation… Why does that sound familiar?" Stock wondered.
"The infestation was originally a strain of the technocyte virus developed by the Orokin Empire as a biological weapon, meant to crush the rebellion staged by their outlying colonies. Everything went as the scientists had predicted it would for several months, nearly a year in fact, but it didn't last," Thoth explained, "Eventually the Orokin High Command began to lose contact with their insertion teams. It took many more months before it was eventually discovered that many of the teams had actually been exposed and were being devoured and assimilated by the contagion, right along with the rebel colonies. With this discovery came one other: the tenno were immune to the plague. Or at least, they were immune to its original permutation."
Stock had a brief flash of memory, a man in a hazmat suit heaving a body into a pit, a body that didn't look a thing like the man it had once been, then the memory was gone. "And now?" he asked, "What about Anya and the others?"
"I do not know," Thoth admitted, "In theory, even if they are not completely immune, they should still be resistant enough that it would take days of exposure before they suffer any ill effects. Were I you, I would be far more concerned about myself."
"Well thanks, that's just all kinds of helpful," Stock said sarcastically.
"That's what I'm here for," Thoth quipped, "To make sure that if you die, at least you'll be warned about it first."
"That makes me feel so much better," Stock snorted, "How near are we to the elevator?"
"That short flight of stairs to your left," Thoth instructed. Stock took them two at a time, rounded a corner, and came face to… he wasn't sure what, with what could only be a victim of the infestation.
"Right, you were here first so I'll just, uh, leave you to it," Stock said, starting to back away.
The thing let out a perfectly wretched squall, staggered backward about a step and a half, then launched itself straight for him. Stock dodged to his right and pumped four rounds into it with his assault rifle before it dropped, its body already beginning to melt into a disgusting ooze even before it reached the floor. He scrambled over to the elevator and slapped the keypad, keeping his gun trained toward the corner where anything coming up the stairs would have to emerge into his line of fire. Stock killed at least ten more of the things before the elevator arrived and stopped at their floor, then he shot another just as the door opened. Once there was an opening big enough for him and Thoth to fit through he dove into the elevator, tugging the sentinel after him, then he pressed the button for the next floor up and the doors immediately closed again.
"You interrupted my scan, that could have proven valuable!" Thoth protested.
"There are sure to be more around," Stock told him, "Personally I would rather not be made into mincemeat by those things."
"Yes, of course," Thoth relented, "They know we're here now, we can't help running into them no matter what we do."
"See, you'll have more data than either you or the captain will even know what to do with," Stock teased, "Alright, you ready?"
"We don't have a choice," Thoth said dryly, "The door's already opened."
"Yeah, but you could pretend," Stock smirked as they left the elevator and headed through what used to be a common area toward the bridge.
"I will never understand organics' behavior," Thoth grumbled, "Why this constant need to derive humor from something which isn't the least bit humorous?"
"Because if we don't we'll go insane," Stock said, checking every inch of the midsized room before proceeding toward the door at the far end. They were only half way through the second section when they began hearing the sounds of the infested moving around in their immediate area again. Strangely though, it took the infested much longer to find them than it had the first time. Apparently going up one level had temporarily stalled the monsters, and when they did see another one, Stock made short work of it.
After that though things just became progressively worse, with more and more infested constantly coming at them from new directions. Soon they were fighting for every inch of progress they made, and Stock was definitely feeling the strain of continually fighting them off before they got near the end of the final section they had to clear before reaching the bridge. They soon realized however that the tenno weren't having an easy time either. Even so, Stock had never been happier in his life to see the tell-tale wave of candy pink energy that indicated Anya had detonated her molecular prime.
He and Thoth were just close enough to the bridge to see the wave before it dissipated, but that was enough. Stock raised his rifle and fired on the nearest infested that had still been within the wave's radius, and the thing exploded, taking every other primed enemy and several clean enemies with it. By the time the chain reaction had played out the room was much, much emptier than it had been to begin with, leaving Stock and Thoth with a clear path to the bridge.
They came through the door just in time to see Anya take careful aim at an infested at the far end of the bridge and fire, then the whole room was bathed in a brilliant pink blaze before all the enemies disintegrated into glowing vapor which eventually disappeared altogether.
"Anya!" Stock called, slinging his rifle across his back and racing toward the nova. She squeaked and Stock soon found himself wrapped tightly in her arms, an embrace which he gladly returned.
"It's good to see you two got here in one piece," Reya said, "Thoth, we can't seem to get into the computer system on our own, it's heavily encrypted. Not to mention these… creatures, haven't given us a moment's peace since our first attempt."
"Ah, yes, allow me," Thoth replied, floating over to the computer and setting down on top of it, inserting one of his many interface modules into one of the data slots, "I suggest keeping out a sharp eye, if your trying to get in is what set the infested off to begin with then they will not appreciate my intrusion."
"Then it really is the infestation," Reya sighed, "I had thought that terrible plague was wiped out with the Orokin."
"I took as many scans as I could, given the circumstances," Thoth said, "I believe that I have acquired enough data to prove without a doubt that what has taken over this ship is in fact an infestation outbreak."
"But how did it get here?" Anya said, she and Stock finally satisfied that neither of them had been permanently damaged, "I shouldn't think the corpus would be that insane."
"Hopefully the corpus were able to record the origin before the plague took them," Reya said.
"Captain," Talos spoke, his tone immediately putting all of them on guard.
"Anya, now," Reya instructed as infested flooded through the doors, and Anya detonated her molecular prime.
Reya then began launching fireballs at the infested, then Talos unleashed his radial javelin. Anything that wasn't impaled or burnt to a crisp vaporized. There were still more pouring into the room, and Anya created an antimatter drop, raising it into the air. Stock pumped it full of rounds from his assault rifle, then Anya sent it straight into the middle of a large group of infested. The bomb exploded, sending melted flesh and dismembered body parts flying in all directions, then Reya turned the entire bridge into a raging inferno. This effectively stopped the infested from getting any closer than twenty meters in any direction and they finally were able to catch a breath.
"Have you found anything?" Reya questioned Thoth.
"Yes, captain, I believe I have," the cephalon replied, "It appears that this vessel was actually heading to the corpus base on Pluto for repairs when they were intercepted and attacked by the grineer. They repelled the attack, but as you can see here the captain seems concerned that the grineer didn't seem to have put much effort into the assault. For two or three days the ship's logs are fairly standard, clean-up and repair reports, things of that nature, but after that reports of sickness begin to trickle in, first a few here and there but they increase in frequency. I think you will find this log to be the most interesting." Thoth pulled up a log dated from five earlier and the tenno began to read.
"It says here that they found a series of contaminated air filters slipped into the ship's air circulation system at various points," Anya said, pointing to one section of the log, "And here they list the filters as being of grineer origin. Do you think perhaps the grineer had something to do with this infestation outbreak?"
"It's possible," Reya said, continuing to peruse the log, "Pull up the logs from the past eight days until now." He complied and Reya began comparing them to the rest of the logs, starting from the grineer attack and working her way forward. The captain noted that his crew had been in excellent health before the attack, and that it was only afterwards that anyone began showing signs of illness of any kind.
The last few logs were disturbing to read, made all the more so by the fact that the captain knew he was infected. He apparently didn't know what the disease was, but he knew he was running out of time. His last few coherent words were to request that, should anyone board the ship, they would turn back immediately and destroy it. After this the log degenerated into wordless lines of letters and symbols until the log had terminated itself. "Thoth, copy the central memory core onto a data mass, then set this ship to self destruct. It must not reach the Orcus Relay," Reya ordered.
"Yes, captain," Thoth acknowledged, "I recommend setting at least a thirty minute delay, as it took Sergeant Woodstock and myself at least that long to reach the bridge from the transit hub."
"Good idea, Thoth," Reya said, "Do it. Anya, how many wormholes do you think you can manage?"
"My frame has recharged enough that I think I can bunny hop us eight to ten times before I'm completely out," she replied, "As long as Thoth goes through with one of us we'll all be able to get through each wormhole before I have to open another."
"Alright, Thoth, on my mark, set the reactor online to meltdown," Reya instructed, "Anya, get ready to open a wormhole. Let Talos, Stock and me worry about damage output."
"Ready when you are, captain," Talos said.
"Now," Reya ordered, and Thoth set to work on the computer.
"Done," he informed them after only a few seconds, "Thirty-five minutes to meltdown."
"Let's go people, move it!" Reya ordered. They cleared the bridge of as many infested as possible, then made a run for it.
"Welcome back," Boreas greeted them as they all filed off the liset, "How did the mission go?"
"Everyone who went, including Thoth's helios platform, is going to need to be completely sterilized and quarantined for at least five days," Reya said, her voice tinged with annoyance, "Oh, and the liset will need a thorough sterilization as well."
"Why?" Boreas asked in surprise.
"The infestation has returned," Reya said, "The grineer brought it back as part of a plot to provoke an all out war between the tenno and the corpus, likely with the idea that they would exterminate whoever was left at the end of it."
"This will need to be brought to the attention of the clan leaders," Boreas said, "Assuming they will even listen."
"They will have to," Reya said, "We brought back proof. I had Thoth copy the cruiser's entire memory core before we set it to self destruct. Once his helios has been confirmed clean, have him plug in and download a backup copy onto our own mainframe. I do not want to risk losing this, we can't afford it. The tenno are already basically at war with the grineer already even if no one will admit it, we can't hope to survive taking on the corpus at the same time."
"Right," Boreas nodded, "I'll contact Elan immediately and inform him of the situation. Perhaps with the two of you together you'll be able to convince the rest of the clans."
"Make sure that he knows not to mention that Anya and Stock were along for the mission," Reya said suddenly, "The other clans already mistrust us because we didn't kill him when we found him in her cryopod, they do not need an excuse to deny this information."
"Yes, captain," Boreas acknowledged, "Are they aware that they are being kept out of the operation for the time being?"
"Stock was the first to suggest it," Reya replied, "Anya wasn't happy about it, but she also agreed that it was for the best. Everyone knows how crucial this is, one false move, one clan ignoring this threat because of a personal grudge, and every tenno in the system is in danger."