Orokin Embers (Part 1) (Nov 25Th, 2013. Chp 12-14)

[niekitty]

Moar. We needs moar

im warking as fast as i can!

[niekitty]

Twelve

In the temple of Mars Gradivus

 

   Light streamed through the emptiness, sometimes intersecting hurtling projectiles and turning them to atomic vapor. Had there been atmosphere to witness, there would have been sound to rival the hammers of the gods of war, and fires to put the blazes of hell to shame.

   There was no atmosphere.

   Ships of every class streaked through the blackness. Without atmosphere in the way the visuals were distractingly sharp, making it hard to pick out the rapid moving smaller craft amidst the stars. Death stalked in silent glee between the drifting hulks of asteroids and the only telltale sign of his presence were the abrupt spheres of expanding gasses that were lit with their own internal heat. Capitol ships heaved themselves back and forth on the unheard thunder of maneuvering jets, jockeying for a better angle to impale one another with boarding tubes.

Insanity gripped the vacuum. Men and women died, months of hard work of construction yards was reduced to scrap in seconds, and the local radio frequencies were useless from the static of so much power and the shrieks of the damned and dying.

   In the midst of an intensely thick asteroid shoal two vessels had rammed nose first into one another and spiraled in their death kiss through the shattered remnants of a failed world. Even doomed their guns shook and glowed with power, tearing at one another’s hulls and sending unlucky crew spewing out into eternity. Their support ships swarmed around the outer hulls; too focused on killing one another to see the impending fate of their motherships.

   Reality squirmed.

   On the bridge of the Corpus frigate no was left alive at the detail sensor station to shout warning of what was coming. The fabric of space bent, twisted, and tore open, emitting a wave of light and a single, massive object that shone black in comparison to The Void. It tumbled out at speed, burning bright from a hundred points on its hull as the power relays, capacitors, and engines failed; it its wake, the hulk trailed thousands of roots.

   It hit the Grineer ship near the fore decks and began crumbling instantly, venting atmosphere and power alike as the weft and warp of space dragged itself back shut. The shift of momentum was enough to bring all three doomed vessels into the gravity well of the ancient, dead world  below them, and other than shouts of surprise from a few nearby ships officers the event went largely unnoticed as man and machine tried to kill one another.

 

I groaned and lifted my head enough to get a look through the shattered glass of the bridge canopy. The holographic display in the operations center was off, but through the tall windows I could only see the ugly green hull of a Grineer ship. There were weapons spitting, but not at my wreck. I tried to stand up and fell again; the internal gravity was failing on one side, which gave the deck a sickening slant.

A distant, age-dulled alarm was blaring somewhere nearby and through the thick haze of my spinning head I identified it as a hull breach. Lights flaring around the sparking control panels of the command bridge indicated catastrophic system failures.

Something vast, dry looking, and red swept slowly across the windows and I blinked stupidly at the dusty surface of Mars. It was WAY too close for comfort.

My frame registered hundreds of individual transmissions clogging space, but filtered until it found one more familiar.

“Ahhh! why am I on fire?”

A deeper voice cut in gruffly, “Stay BEHIND us and you WON’T be on fire so much y’ daft bint!”

“I’m trying!”

A third voice broke over them, “More stompers coming up through the lockers on the right! Get those damned clones to do some good and send ‘em down that side passage before the Corpus get us in a crossfire.”

Tenno. Helping Grineer.

We rubbed our head and I sighed heavily. Somebody was going to explain what was going on if I ever got back to the Tower, or I was going to start some uncomfortable fires. Adjusting to the deck I scrambled through the shattered canopy and slid down a root to the lower deck.

Atmosphere was rushing out around a green communication spire that had punctured the hull, but I kept going until I found a space of forward hull that had remained intact long enough to puncture the other ship fully. Grineer security was easy to override and it was the work of seconds to get a blast door open long enough to push through the resulting gale and into their ship. However long I had been living on the derelict it had never been home and it was not hard leaving it behind; my only qualm was that my life seemed to have become an endless series of hostile ships.

Something big swung around a corner in front of me and planted the muzzle of an enormous rifle in my face, but a moment later it stood down and jerked its metallic bulb of a head. “Let’s go, Tenno.”

My hand was on a pistol, but I paused myself as she started stumping away. “What?”

She looked back and barked, “The rest of you are already helping secure the boarding section. What hit us just now?”

Behind my frames mask I blinked. “Another ship. Empty. Just derelict.”

She nodded and started hurrying away as fast as her hydraulic legs could carry her. Rubbing my head again I caught up. “What’s going on, exactly?”

“Engines are near to breach. Hull is buckling too. Need more escape pods. More intact on Corpus ship.” There was no change in the tone of her synthesized voice, but the set of her shoulders bobbed. “I do not know about you, but I want to escape alive.”

 

There was a space cleared and fused by weaponfire. The fighting was still thick and we hung back to one side as a platoon of Grineer charged by shooting. The hulking white armor shifted. “I will back them up. I do not know where the others are, Tenno. Luck.”

“You too…”

A stream of light cut through the bulkhead just above me and we all flinched away from it. Atmosphere was venting somewhere through the shredded interface between the vessels and the damage just added more wind. My arm snapped up almost without my input and through the eye in the pistol I spotted the shooter as he ejected a smoking power cell from his weapon. I fired once and saw his helmet burst.

The soldiers shouted encouragement to each other and charged into the crisscrossing barrage of death. If the other Tenno were crossing to the Corpus ship, they were not at that breach. I burst into movement, darting around armored legs, and tipped, sliding on my hip as I came out between two stumbling clones. There were robots and Corpus lining a balcony and more trying to push down the stairs, but for all their superior technology, they died easily. I emptied both pistols as fast as I could pull the-

     Master Darro squinted. “This one did display an unusual capacity for marksmanship, for her temperaments.” He nodded slowly and gripped the slender girl by the chin, lifting her to the toes of her pressure suit. “Yes… Good eyes.”

     Warmaster Burris harrumphed, which was more habit than attempt at communication. He walked a slow circle as his eyes carved up all of his impressions into a cohesive profile. The girl was shorter than average, but not terribly. Asian heritage strong, but not pure. She had a natural tan that would likely darken eventually from time in space, and jet black hair caught into a tight knot over some hair pins. She was clearly freezing in the thin suit. Her eyes held a spark of fire even in the cold room, but that fire was not the defiance that so often led trainees to scars or crippling injuries…

     Darro chuckled and brushed his long, thin moustache with one hand. It trailed and swept over the armored plates of his Frame. “Run her through the marksmanship trials. You didn’t need me down here to tell you that.”

-triggers. Corpus jerked and twisted away, and as the cylinders cycled to empty I stopped and let the Grineer push ahead around me. My hands were reloading on automatic while my head tried to shake itself out of the flash of memory.

Head shots. I had missed only one shot of that barrage. I flicked the pistols, closing them, and burst forward again.

This time I cut sideways through the burning wreckage of the bulkheads. The heavy rounds made short work of the defenders on the stairway, and without that extra layer of crossfire the holding action collapsed.

The white armored Heavy stumped by chuckling. “Bet them did not expected that.”

The deck heaved, throwing many from their feet and almost knocking me down. The gaps in the ruined hulls where atmosphere was venting steadily started to roar and fire blazed white hot in through them. Someone shouted something, but it was lost; the sound of even that thin atmosphere tearing at the unprotected hulls was more a stream of physical force than a noise. The last traces of resistance shattered and the entire squad of Grineer marines charged for the inner hatches of the Corpus ship with me; hopefully toward the escape pods or shuttle bays.

Edited November 25, 2013 by niekitty

[niekitty]

Thirteen

“You notice anything particular about our luck these past few days? Any kind of pattern?”

-Cpt. Malcolm Reynolds

 

A dozen clones would have been looking at long odds, even with all their armor and weaponry; the Corpus had the advantage of far too many numbers if you counted their robots. I evened the odds and then some.  Every time I pulled the trigger it felt more comfortable; more familiar. The jump of the pistols in my hands became a rhythm that I could predict and use, tilting them so that the recoil brought my sights onto the next targets head.

Ammo was in shorter supply than I would have liked, but I had the wickedly rapid rifle still slung across my back if it came to it.

The vibration of firing guns had been overtaken by a steadily increasing shudder with violent jolts that I supposed marked weaker portions of one ship or the other being torn away. Outside the windows there was nothing but fire and the dancing shadows played hell with perspective that was even worse than the strobe of Grineer rifles firing.

Every step felt as if it were too slow. My frame squirmed around me, but I had gotten at least a little used to the odd tugging it produced; it was even enjoyable at times when there were not guns being pointed at me.

There were guns being pointed at me.

I skipped sideways as the last cylinder of rounds clicked empty. The marines moved up to take the slack for a moment while I tucked the weapons back into the webs on my thighs. The rifle felt odd for a few moments, but once I had my hands in the right places it was merely a mildly awkward shift in stance.

It was noticeable when the resistance vanished. For two rooms we met nothing but a lonely defense turret. We came out into a shaking, rumbling hallway with the light of the Martian atmosphere outside. We were at a strange angle to the unclear horizon and I realized that someone had the engines firing; with the weight of one ship it might have pulled back up, but with the damage and two whole ships of dead weight it was merely holding us in the upper atmosphere and maintaining the reentry speeds. If the engines kept running it would tear everything apart.

Then again, without those, we might have already been smeared across the peak of a mountain or something.

     The lights came back on.

     It was in front of me.

     Right in front of me.

     Between my pistols.

     It was a frame… or looked like one. It had a strange crest of stiff fur on its head, and bulbous protrusions all over. Around the hips was a thick web of armored tendons… it was like my frame, only… wrong. It twisted to look at me with baleful red eyes, and then the helmet slowly folded back to reveal...

     My face.

     Her hair was too short, and there was a waxy sheen to her skin, but she had my face.

I stumbled to a stop as my brain finished processing a dark spot in the center of the hallway floor. The marines stumbled as well and fanned out on either side of me. The thing let the blackness dissolve from around it, revealing the same shape. It still looked like a warped version of my own Ember, and I could see the twisted scarring that my fire had left her with. Her hair was longer, but her skin still looked waxy.

Like a Grineer.

She grinned at me and her helmet shivered. “Hello… Ember... Four two eight.”

It never rains. I groaned. “Can we take this somewhere else before the atmosphere of this planet kills us to death?!”

“This…” she hesitated as her helmet started to fold shut, “is better. Appropriate. Yes?”

“No.”

She made a heaving motion and BLACK FIRE streaked out at me! I jerked back and without my conscious order my frame countered with a wave of its own heat that surrounded me and seemed to harden its outer alloy. Even then my barrier crumpled instantly and I registered mild external damage.

The Grineer opened fire. It should have cut her to ribbons at that range, but she just waded into it, barrier sparking and shedding projectiles as she bared her claws. I hefted the rifle she had once tried to shoot at me with and opened up. The thing rocked violently in my grip, but not enough to spoil my aim overmuch at that range.

She crouched and tensed, gathering black fire around herself. I dove sideways and instead of me, she collided with one of the clones. Ash and blood sprayed across the wall, but she had come to a stop too close to the heavy; it punched her hard enough to bounce her off the bulkhead. Most people would have likely died from either part of the blow.

The twisted version of me came back with a swing that took the Heavies hydraulic arm off just below the shoulder right through her barrier. As if nothing had happened my stalker crouched and darted at me again. This time I jumped and she slammed into a railing. I came down on her shoulders and drove my knee into the base of her skull.

She threw me into the wall.

I raised the rifle and opened up again, but she hopped back and started drawing fire in again.

Fire.

I felt a rush of endorphins crawl through my suit at the thought of heat.

My stalker punched the deck and a moving wave of strange, black heat rushed outward! Grineer screamed and died, and the Heavy was driven back against the bulkhead.

Stalker had more raw power, but-

     Master Darro rapped the thin girl on the skull with his cane. “Concentrate.”

     She gritted her teeth and did. The half-living machines around her arms trembled with power and the girl arched her back with a cry of pleasure as the training gauntlets emitted jets of flame. The ice around the training room ran with water, and burst in blasts of steam at the sudden temperature change. It lasted barely half a second before she collapsed clutching her chest, leaving slight burns from the fingertips of the gauntlets on her bare skin, but she was too exhausted to notice the pain.

     Master Darro made an appreciative humming sound and brushed his moustache aside with one hand. “Good. Very good.”

     She looked up, startled at the flash of kindness and praise.

     “Do it again.”

-she was an amateur compared to me. She was playing with MY element! I kicked the deck hard enough that my heel cracked the plating and I sent a more directed wave of fire back! This was no mere fire, either; I had no idea how I was managing it, but this blaze was deep purple, and it cut a swath into the stalkers firestorm! The surviving Grineer dove into the protected cone of clear deck behind me and opened up through the flames.

Stalker once again shrugged off the bullets and barely stumbled when my fire hit her. Her storm ended, but her barrier was still up. I could hear a sneer in her voice. “We am stronger.”

I lifted the rifle to my shoulder. “Muscle was never my thing.” I fired one shot.

Over her shoulder.

The lone bullet hit a spreading crack and the entire blast armored window exploded inward in a sheet of raw power as the friction heat of the atmosphere found the new way into the hull.

Stalker let out a startled shriek that was audible even over the sudden, volcanic roar as the blast of light and energy washed over her and vaporized the entire corner of the hallway.

I broke into a flat run for the next blast door as it began grinding toward the floor, and five Grineer clones pounded along behind me shouting what I’m sure they wished sounded more like battle cries than yelps of terror.

Edited November 25, 2013 by niekitty

[niekitty]

Fourteen

…but he went down to him with a staff, and plucked the spear out of the Egyptian’s hand, and slew him with his own spear.

-2^nd Samuel 23:21

 

We found Corpus again a deck shy of where Heavy said that the escape pods should be. They were coming rushing up a side tunnel, and obviously were making a break for it, but through rage, insanity, or some total absence of self preservation they started shooting on sight. It was simple enough to keep moving at first, but as we drew closer room by room we had an ever increasing supply of energy-weapon toting maniacs gunning for us.

The heavy weapons started coming out, too.

I was racing along a raised section toward a doorway when something hit my legs and took them out from under me. My barrier failed and I hit the ground rolling. The clones at least had some sense of tactics: they knew I was an asset and were close enough to grab me and haul me back upright.

I sent a blast of fire back toward the source of the shot, but if it hit anyone I did not stick around to see it. We kept running. The Heavy was mostly just absorbing weapon fire now; a living barricade. She was out of ammo. We stayed close and tried to cover her, trading up taking the hits as we moved.

“HERE!” shouted one of the marines!

We charged through a doorway and followed him, vaulting over a railing and dropping into another room. The chamber was shaking and a pair of fight-bombers was dangling from repair stations. A troop transport was resting on a launch rail, but the weapons mountings were empty. It was hot inside and we could see that the launch tubes outer doors (and in fact a good portion of the tubes themselves) had been completely sheared away.

“Move!” I yelled, even as I rolled on landing to absorb the impact.

A door to the rear of the chamber opened and boiled over with Corpus. Behind us more were erupting from the doorway, but they could not take the drop to the floor and were slowed by the stairs.

We ran for the transport, shooting blind over our shoulders.

Something slammed into my shoulder, dropping my entire barrier again and spinning me to the floor! The Heavy took a step back toward me to help.

Something blurred in the air and I brought my rifle up to protect my head.

Blackness enveloped me and a long, square box of enormous rifle slammed down lengthwise at my head! I caught it on my ready weapon and kicked upward! The roil of black energy burst upward from my kick and I was staring at Stalker! She was scorched, melted in places, and I could see her ribs in one spot; part of her face was showing through her helmet and she screamed raw fury as she tried to beat her way past my rifle with the heavier Corpus weapon! She was abysmally strong and the structure of my forearms and Frames muscles started sending up integrity alerts across my vision almost instantly!

The Heavy started stumbling toward me, but she was too far away.

I was about to die.

     The girl bundled her hair into a knot and jabbed a careless hair pin through it. She had her stasis suit mostly on, but was getting ready for the hood. “What will happen?”

     Master Darro shrugged and tugged on his moustache thoughtfully. “Who can tell? We can only hope to awaken in time. What happened… The politics of it are too much of a mess for anyone to assign blame accurately. Maybe it was us. Maybe it was the Empire. Maybe some lingering trap of the Sentients. Whatever the case, what we have is only the past.”

     She eyed him with a frown. “How long?”

     “That is not given me to see either, child.” He gave a little chuckle. “You are more than ready to be Tenno, A…” he stopped himself short of her name and smiled warmly. “Ember.”

     The girl grinned and pulled the fasting seal up her throat to her chin. “Goodnight, Master Darro. May your rest be as peaceful as mine.”

     “Perhaps more.” He touched a control and she cringed as the capsule started to lock shut and freeze…

Something huge and bloody orange slammed into Stalker at speed, the collision sending the tattered, still smoldering wreck of Stalker through a heavy heap of machinery that was fixed to the deck, leaving her stolen rifle to fall across me. My frame grabbed the rifle while I gaped up at the massive Rhino Frame towering over me… he looked familiar.

“Get her up! Move!”

A sister bound to a Trinity stumbled awkwardly over the jostling deck and grabbed me, pulsing waves of nanites and cells at me that my frame gratefully opened vents to accept. She kept her grip on me and we stumbled as fast as we could toward the Grineer.

The Rhino thundered along behind us, using his barrier and armor to block the growing fusillade of enemy fire projected at us. A frame type I did not recognize and a pleasantly ominous Nyx were holding the transport hatch. A grenade went off and threw us the last few strides into the hatch. The Trinity fetched up against a bulkhead support and batted wildly at the small fires the grenade had started on her outer armor. “AGAIN?!?!” she yowled.

The Rhino literally picked up the Nyx and the small, sleek frame and carried them both through the hatch before it snapped shut.

From the cockpit another unfamiliar Frame looked back. It looked almost entirely mechanical and had odd, over-sized eye lenses. “Ach, goot. Ju got zem.”

“Not if the planet kills us.”

“Ach, I knew zat I vas forgetink someting, ja?” he turned away and the transport lurched forward so fast it bowled us all over backward.

All of us except the Rhino, who seemed utterly unphased.

I heaved a Grineers leg off my helmet and sat up just in time to see through the forward port as we emerged through the fire of the plummeting ship.

Rocks.

Gravity and a few other forces of physics conspired to pile all of us up (again, aside the rhino, who just bent a support holding it) in the back of the cabin as we turned up. The ship screamed as it climbed straight up a cliff face and the pilots’ voice came back mildly, “Ach. So dast vas vhy ze altitude display vas saying ze negative numbers, ja.”

I pushed the sleek little Frames hips out of my line of sight and tried to sit up again.

The Rhino looked back at me and snorted. “So where the hell have you been?”

Edited November 25, 2013 by niekitty

[niekitty]

Interlude Four

     I am ashamed to admit that I screamed as I awoke. I was so cold that it felt near to having a thousand knives driven into my flesh all at once, but that I gave voice to my pain was an embarrassment and a telling reminder that my training was not yet finished.

     Those standing around me did not react to my voice. They were prepared and professional.

     The first sight to greet my pain reddened eyes was a sky of sickly green and blue. All around the edges, as the blackness withdrew, I saw stone and snow. Closer, there were bands of metal encasing me; so near that it was hard to see them at first.

          -Orokin Embers

 

 It sat up with a wicked scream of pain from the sharp red grit in its wounds and clawed wildly at its surroundings, rage giving it a burning drive to keep moving despite the redline and utterly black-signal systems and structural supports through its bodies.

 There was no one around to see it struggling to right itself.

 The sky above it was red streaked with smoke and stone walls rose up on either side; an immense canyon so deep it blocked some of the meager sunlight. The thing saw ash and falling debris plummeting into the atmosphere as it retched up the ruined black stuff of its lungs. The atmosphere was thin here, but there was just enough that with what little it had left in it, it started growing new breathing organs even as old, ravaged muscles started dragging it through the gravel…

Edited November 25, 2013 by niekitty

[MachFarcon]

Nice! Well done on these chapters!

 

Sorry I didn't get to review the new chapters today. Work was quite busy yesterday.

 

I like "BroGrineer". 

 

I kinda feel slightly sorry for the !EmberStalker. Her only purpose is to kill Ember428. Granted, there is an untold story behind it, but still. And since she can't rest, it's kinda like "Feeling Sorry for the Fallen Angel". You might feel some pity, but that's not going to stop you from doing what needs to be done.

 

And there's Rhino in this one! (I'm a Rhino man myself).

[niekitty]

Nice! Well done on these chapters!

 

Sorry I didn't get to review the new chapters today. Work was quite busy yesterday.

 

I like "BroGrineer". 

 

I kinda feel slightly sorry for the !EmberStalker. Her only purpose is to kill Ember428. Granted, there is an untold story behind it, but still. And since she can't rest, it's kinda like "Feeling Sorry for the Fallen Angel". You might feel some pity, but that's not going to stop you from doing what needs to be done.

 

And there's Rhino in this one! (I'm a Rhino man myself).

thank you!! =^^=

 

Emberstalker really IS set up like that, and i feel sorry for her too, but yeah. havent heard the last of her yet...

 

the Rhino in this story is actually one of my friends Rhino, but yeah, i love having one of those things around (to hide behind while i start fires...).

[niekitty]

Quick question for anybody that's read this far and feels like weighing in: should chapter 15 take place during the mess with Alad, or should i leave it out?

428 was actually not involved in the hunt, or Valkyr's rescue; she was helping out a couple other members of her clan looking after a rickety old gas mining platform around Saturn (in other words: keeping her dinky barrier the heck away from all those zappy corpus guns. XD ).

[MachFarcon]

Honestly, if she wasn't in the Hunt, it's perfectly awesome to not have her do anything with it. Granted, she might hear of it in passing, but it would be interesting to see a side of the story that's about the new environments instead of the Hunt.

 

Just my two credits though.