One more to go after this, then it's time to start on the in-game timeframe. This one and the next one are once again my work, but when we start the next segment, the first three will have been written by my friend. I think I'll take a short break after I upload the final chapter before the game to give everyone time to catch up, as much as y'all can at least. Hopefully this isn't too much of a mess to try and follow.
Anya rolled her head, first to one side, then to the other. Only a little over a year had passed since the marines had been pulled back out of the war with the Sentients, but it seemed like a life time ago. The only thing keeping her going was the idea that, once this was over, she would go home. She made a promise then and there that if she lived long enough to get back to the empire, she would do her best to overturn it, to end the pain and suffering the Orokin caused everywhere their foul touch reached. And maybe, just maybe, she would see Stock again, hear his voice again… How she wished for it now, especially when she was the only one awake but for one other tenno and their two handlers. Ira was a decent enough man she supposed, but he just wasn't Stock… No one would ever be her marine.
She shook herself, dragged herself back to the present. Night or day, in the void it was all the same, everything was always enveloped in a crystalline glow, everything always wreathed in silver flames of light… And the Sentients were getting ready to make another push. Anya felt the habitual shock from her implant, it never failed, whenever there was a fight brewing her handler would push the button and activate the controller in her head. It usually hurt, but lately she had noticed it becoming progressively less painful, less powerful. During the last few weeks every new shock had been just a little less sure, a little less able to make her mind scream as if it were dying. Within the last couple of days it had been a mere annoyance, and today it was barely even that, a simple suggestion that she might want to pay attention to her surroundings.
She smiled behind her faceplate and stood, stretching and working the feeling back into her limbs, then she snagged her rifle up from the floor and slung it across her back before going to where Elan and Reya were snoozing together on the ground and giving them each a slight nudge. She almost wondered why they weren't up already, but just as she did she realized she didn't care. If they could find some happiness in the middle of all this mess she wouldn't judge them, even if it did strike her as odd and maybe strangely funny.
"Anya, what's going on?" Reya asked in surprise, stretching her arms over her head before standing up.
"Sentients are coming," Anya replied, "Didn't your implant go off?"
"I didn't feel a thing," Reya said, confusion in her voice, "Hey, you don't suppose it finally failed? Have you noticed the shocks have been getting weaker these past few weeks? Maybe we won't have to live this way much longer…"
"I'm trying not to jinx it," Anya said, "You know how these things are, the minute we think we're getting lucky, something terrible happens and throws it right back in our faces."
"But I didn't feel anything either," Elan said quietly, "What else could it be? Mine hasn't fired at all for three days straight, I've just been reacting so my handler won't get suspicious."
"I can't do that," Reya said nervously, "Executioner Schweitzer doesn't have any tells at all, if mine's failed I won't know if he's pressed the button or not."
"It won't matter," Anya told them, "We're in the void. No one can help them if, say, they meet with a small, possibly fatal accident."
"That kind of talk before you're sure could be dangerous," Boreas pointed out, "Let's wait. Talk to some of the others. If everyone else is noticing it, if it's the same for enough of the other tenno, we have a way out. If not, then we'll have to wait a little longer."
"I have plenty of time to wait," Anya said, shrugging her shoulders, "There's nothing for me here, everything I ever had is gone or so far out of reach that it may as well not exist. That's not to say I don't care about you and the others, but it's not the same…"
"Don't worry," Boreas said, "I understand. Come, we should get to the lines before anyone realizes anything has changed."
Anya and Reya nodded, following him out of the damaged building and into the somehow brighter light that filled the ruined courtyard, out to the wall, then to the front where Ira waited. The loki operator looked toward them and nodded, and he came to stand just barely behind Anya, holding his rifle protectively over her shoulder. She wished he would stop that, it made her nervous, but nothing she ever said managed to convince him to do as she asked, so she had given up. Now she merely avoided him when she could and tolerated his presence when she couldn't.
She closed her eyes, quieted her mind as she did before every battle, then the first sentient fighters glided onto the field and she locked into combat mode, running her hands through the motions of cycling a round through her gun. She slammed the bolt home to chamber the round and stilled, watching the movements of the sentient lines. She would not let them through. If they came through the void, if they waged an all out war on the Orokin Empire, they would slaughter everything they could catch, tenno and human alike. Everything would burn, and everything would die. Actually, now that she thought about it, maybe the Orokin Empire and the Sentients would wipe each other out and the tenno could mop up whatever was left. Now she had to wonder if that would really be such a bad thing after all.
She adjusted her grip on the heavy sniper rifle in her hands, then as the sentients came within reach of the tenno's most devastating abilities Elan dropped a shield. Anya detonated her most volatile ability, destabilizing the enemies' molecular structures, then as Boreas and Reya cut loose with their own forms of retribution Anya began taking out whatever looked the most dangerous at a given moment.
Anything that managed to survive the combined attacks of Anya, Boreas, and Reya ended up falling straight into the waiting maw of death that was Elan and Ira. Ira's powers were based solely around deception, but his weapon was nothing to sniff at, the thing could spew lead faster than nearly any other weapon Anya had ever seen, and Elan had a powerful rifle of his own, supported farther by his ability to shock anything that came near into the ground. The battle lasted nearly five hours, and the tenno were badly battered by the time it was over. But they had won, and the sentient numbers had been significantly thinned. The next few battles might see them regaining ground they had lost, and for Anya that was worth every aching muscle, including the constant dull throb in her brain, although that was rather less than usual at the moment.
Their shift was over for the day, and as soon as they were cleared Anya went back to the bombed out building she and her friends had slept in the night before. She found her corner, picked up her pack, and pulled out an energy bar, allowing herself to drift into autopilot as she clocked out, allowing her mind to go wherever it wanted. It took several minutes before she realized that someone was talking to her, and a few more minutes passed before she realized that it was her handler trying to get her attention. Her implant had apparently chosen that day to fail. She carefully set her food back into her bag, re-engaged her faceplate, then slowly stood, facing the man holding the remote and mashing buttons as fast as he could move his fingers. As if that was going to save his miserable life.
She calmly unsheathed the sword on her hip and strode forward, allowing him a few more presses of the buttons on the remote before she smirked behind her helm and swiftly ran him through. The man wheezed a few desperate breaths and tried to scream, his fingers scrabbling at her armor as he tried to grab onto her, then she pulled the blade free and let him fall. She cleaned her blade on his uniform and returned it to its sheath at her side, then she went back and sat down, finishing her energy bar before leaning back against the wall, closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep.
She slept through everything that happened after, the frantic scrambling, the slaughter of every handler the other tenno could catch, the deaths of any who managed to escape on the bladed limbs of the sentients, and when next she woke, the tenno were free.