Ten Zero

Ko-lee and I make our way through the underbrush towards Sharip as quickly as we can. If we were allowed to sprint straight from our original position to the settlement, we could've been there in an hour, but we had to make an awkward L shaped path to avoid running into the Grineer troop that had passed by our position. We didn't want them to get even a hint that we were nearby, so we made sure to circle roughly around where we thought they were, before we cut back in towards Sharip. What's more, as we moved, we're still being vaguely quiet, because neither of us knew if that was the only troop that we would run into. No words were spoken, even though we didn't really have a plan once we got back.

I was entirely on board though. Even though I didn't grow up in this universe, I had put enough hours into the game to know that the Grineer were almost always unequivocally evil. There were groups like Steel Meridian, and guys like Kahl-175, but they were literally grown to be instruments of war. They would absolutely shoot first and maybe never ask questions, so I wasn't planning on trying to do the diplomacy route. If I needed to take some shots at some rolly-polly soldiers, I was absolutely willing to pull the trigger. "I just, don't think that we'll win if that happens," the thought coming unbidden to my mind. "As much as I'd like to solo the entire platoon, I'm not a warframe. I'm literally wearing a bundle of cloth; a single stray round would put me in the dirt, and I feel pretty confident in saying I don't have respawns here. Whatever our strat, it needs to be smart and quick, not dumb and brave."

I look at Ko-lee, but her face still has the exact same expression it's held for the last hour and a half. It's one of single minded focus; a look that says "I've got a goal to accomplish, and I'm going to accomplish it, full stop." It's hardly the time for idle chatter, but I desperately want to have something to say, to let her know that we can and will pull off our as of yet unstated plan. But we both know it would just be empty platitudes. Still, the silence between us is driving me crazy, and I open my mouth to speak. "Ko-lee, Kraken? You better shot, maybe." Her eyes dart over to my waist where the weapon is bouncing around in the shoddily constructed holster, before refocusing back on the path before us. There's a pause, and it takes so long for her to respond that I begin to think that I imagined her look, but before I repeat my question, she answers with a curt, "No."

I'm desperately hoping for some follow up, but after nearly 30 seconds, it's clear that none is coming. My light list of topics fully extinguished, I turn my mind back to the the situation before us, my eyes glancing around in the quickly dimming forest. We had planned to be back before the sun had gone down, but the detour added quite a bit of time to our journey, and even with us sneak-jogging through the forest, the sun's rays are now coming in from behind us, rather than from overhead. The light being cast through the trunks of the trees and leaves above us lend an incredibly warm touch to the forest floor, and if we weren't desperately trying to get through the forest, I would have loved to stop and take a moment to admire it. As my eyes wander around the forests tops though, I see a trail of fire from a small brown object, coming from in front of us and to our left.

I immediately stop running, grabbing Ko-lee's waist and pulling her entire frame behind a tree along with me. The little bit of exercise that I had been getting didn't increase my muscle mass in any noticeable capacity, but Ko-lee was still a foot shorter than me, so I was able to somewhat maneuver her around without difficulty. "What!" Ko-lee whisper screams at me, shoving me away from her the second we are near the tree. I point at the sky, the flaming object slightly clearer than before, and her eyes trace my finger into the sky. There's a moment of silence, the only sound the heavy breathing between the two of us, before she says a word I don't quite pick up on. "Again?" I ask, straining my ears to hear the different syllables.

"Tusk. Bolkor. Grineer gunship," she says, a subtle sheen of sweat on her upper brow. "lyaUlus hyte eus a Tusk Firbolg, a dropship. The gunship is..." but she doesn't finish her sentence, nor do I need her too. All the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place, and it's pretty clear why they would send in a gunship rather than a dropship like usual. We watch a moment more, and it becomes clear that the ship isn't coming towards us, but rather our destination. What's more, it is likely to get there before we are. We both look at each other, but no words need to be said. We immediately start moving through the forest again, knowing that every moment we delay could be the difference between saving a life or not.

Roughly 10 minutes later, I can see the edge of the forest, as well as Sharip only a few minutes walk past that. As we get closer to the dividing line, and thus the end of our cover, both of our eyes are peeled, looking for signs of the Grineer. It's not immediately clear whether we had managed to beat them or not, and after a moment of hesitation, Ko-lee gestures me to follow her out into the clearing towards the nearest house. We both sprint over to the facade of the building, keeping as low of a profile as we can, to avoid catching any stray glances from an unseen soldier, but we manage to make it over without incident. My body is screaming at me to take a break, not being used to pushing this hard for this long, but the adrenaline pumping through my system makes it easy enough for me to ignore.

Me and Ko-lee both make our way to opposite sides of the building, and from my position, I can just about see between some houses towards the main road. I look around, and for a moment I start to think that maybe we really did manage to beat the Grineer here, before I catch the side profile of one of the men coming out of the house next to this one. I quickly yank my head back, heart pumping, and strain my ears to alert me to the sounds of the soldier making his way over to me. After 10 or so seconds, I don't hear anything, so I take a few steps back from the house, trying my best to slice the pie, so that I can get a glimpse of him before he does.

As I rotate around the rounded corner of the building, I move steadily and slowly, my eyes burning from my refusal to even blink. Eventually, I see a glimpse of a swinging arm, and before I get a chance to rotate back around, the rest of the body comes into my view. The soldier is facing away from us, moving away from the houses and down towards the main street. I quickly make my way back up to the wall of the building, and think about what I had just seen.

While I knew logically that the Grineer were clones, and even got a chance to see some without their masks on, that had always been in the game. They looked rough, but there was a level of separation that made it easy to ignore. But the glimpses I got of the mans face were... hard to process. He wasn't completely and utterly messed up, like I had imagined he would be, but the corrupted genetic code that all Grineer suffered from was incredibly clear on his face. He had these growths and sores, and his skin was a pallid sickly color, giving the appearance of someone on their death bed. However, his movements were strong, if slightly off kilter. His walk gave the impression that one of his legs was shorter than the other, leading to a bit of a limp.

I could only imagine how rough he'd look from up close, since I was able to get all of that from nearly 30 feet away. But regardless of the man's looks, what was more important was the fact that we hadn't beat the Grineer to the settlement. What little pieces of a plan that we had were now just dust in the wind, and I wasn't really sure what we were going to do from here on out. I took a look at Ko-lee, who was also just finishing up with reconnaissance, and I could tell that she was breathing rather heavy, although I was pretty sure it wasn't from the run in the forest. "Ko-lee?" I ask, touching her arm to get her attention, since my voice was so low. "What do we do?" Ko-lee just looks at me, her mind clearly racing a million miles a minute.

I feel useless. I had known from the attack with the jakir-et that this was never going to be a case of me becoming some superhero always-win chick, just breezing through every conflict. But I want to be able to do something, anything, to help. I want to be more than just the dead weight that Ko-lee is dragging around, but I have so little information to work off of, and lives are at stake.

Real, genuine lives. People could... people might-

People are going to die. My fight or flight had always been fight, but in this instance, it felt like trying to fight a hurricane. "What the fuck are we gonna do with just the two of us?" I think, my eyes keeping peeled for any Grineer stragglers. "We... uhm," Ko-lee starts, and immediately stops. "We look rfo people nhiet houses. Hiding. We rescue them." The plan sounds flimsy at best, and I can tell that even Ko-lee feels so, but I have nothing better to provide, and so I just nod my head. "Okay. Okay," I say in agreement. "I follow. Go," and I gesture for her to lead me to the various houses.

I might have been able to actually take the lead on this one; I've broken into a house or two in my hooligan years (teenage years). But I know that Ko-lee needs to feel in control of the situation, much more than I do, and while I would have had to scan each house top to bottom, Ko-lee has lived here her whole life. If a house had a hiding spot, she would actually know where they are. So I do my best to stay as close as possible, lowering my body to have as little of a silhouette as I could in the last few rays of light.

We make our way to the first house, and the front door is unlocked. "In fact, I don't think I've ever seen Ko-lee lock her front door. Maybe none of the houses have locks? I guess why would you when you live out in the middle of nowhere and know every single person in the town by name?" I think, as we creep our way through the wooden building. It's laid out very similarly to Ko-lee and Sanza's place; there are pieces of furniture that are laid out differently, as well as knick knacks and projects that gives the entire place a feeling of liveliness. Or... it would, if the pressure of the situation wasn't making it feel like the walls were closing in on us. Ko-lee, for her part, had her game face on, and was beelining towards a specific closet. I wasn't sure why, until she reached it, and in the closet beneath some rugs and some odd piece of abandoned Grineer tech was a latch attached to the floor.

She pulls on the latch, and the entire floor of the closet swings upwards, causing everything on it to tumble slightly up against the wall. I take a step back, and head to the closest window, on the off chance that a solider might have caught wind of the sound. It wasn't particularly loud, but I really don't want to get caught with our backs against the wall. I find the window, and look through it, and can see what I assume is the same soldier from before, entering a house a few spots down from us. Other than him though, I don't see anyone else, and somehow that has me more on edge than anything.

"Where the fuck are they?!" I think to myself in frustration. It's one thing to see a dangerous animal, it's another to know it's there, but be unable to find it. I was terrified and angry in equal measure at the thought of them having a net that we somehow slipped through and got caught in ourselves. But there's nothing to do with the emotion, so I just tear my eyes away from the window and head back to Ko-lee, to see if she found anyone. As I make my way into the hallway, she is coming out, and I reach for my gun at the same time she reaches for her zaw. We both have hands on our weapons before we realize we're looking at each other, and she spits some sort of curse word at me.

"Why rea you sneaking onrdau?!" She says in a half whisper, half yell. I don't bother answering as it's a waste of breath; we both know why we are trying to be sneaky, so I just ask, "you find people?" She just stares at me, eyebrows furrowed and with a frown on her face, and she shakes her head no. I let her know that I saw the Grineer soldier enter the house a few spots down from ours, and that I've not seen a single Sharip towns person, 'nor' any of the Grineer, barring the one. She mutters to herself in Ostron, too quick for me to catch, and I wait for her to clarify. After a few moments, she speaks up again, this time slow enough for me to understand. "They aer ni the town square. Everyone is."

Sharip doesn't really have a town square, but I know what she's trying to tell me. The crossroads of the town is the most open area, and she seems to think that for one reason or another, everyone was there, likely with the Grineer. "All 2000+ people? That's... fuck," is all I end up thinking, before Ko-lee follows up with, "we need ot egt ot ereth. We need ot og ot the town square." Part of me wants to argue that 'go into the trap' is not a plan, but it feels productive, and I desperately want to feel like we're doing something to help, so I just swallow, and nod.

She leads me out the back door, and we make our way along the sides of the houses, doing our best to stay in stealth as we leapfrog from house to house. As we do, I can see the solider that had been checking places finish up with the house that he was in, and, with nobody in tow, start making his way towards the square, same as us. We make sure to keep a good distance between us and and him, and after a painstaking amount of minutes, we finally find ourselves sat in the shadow of a house, with a clear line to the center of town. It's as bad as we were expecting.

Every. Single. Person. They're all gathered in a huge mass of people, wearing whatever they had on when they were dragged out of their houses. They're huddling next to each other; mothers, sons, daughters. The children and the elderly holding each other tightly, while encircled by over 100 Grineer soldiers, all whom are pointing their weapons inward. From our position, we can also see Sanza, face to face with a lanky Grineer man, whose face I can't see. Even though we are quite a distance away, both men are projecting; Sanza likely for Sharip, attempting to instill confidence and bravery, and the other man, likely to drum up fervor in his men.

I hear Ko-lee growl next to me, an brutal sound that rips from her throat, and I instinctively reach over to grab her arm before she runs in. When she whips her head over to look at me, there is rage and fury in her eyes. Her pupils are dilated, I can feel every muscle in her body straining against my grip. My hand is so slippery from the nervous sweat that I have to reach out with a second hand and pull her back into the shadow. "What the FUCK do you think you're doing?! Are you just gonna sprint in? You're just going to get fucking domed!" I say in English, before quickly correcting myself. "NO. DIE. YOU. NO. DIE. ...STAY," I whisper as loudly as possible, incensed by my lack of usable vocabulary.

Before Ko-lee gets a moment to say a word, I hear a deep resounding whirr sound, like an engine from hell starting up. My grip immediately tightens on Ko-lee's wrist, and before I can even start to explain what I think I just heard, the sounds of a truck crashing assaults our ear drums, before a shock wave knocks us on our ass, and into the dirt and mud beneath us. I whip my head around, terrified of finding confirmation of what I believed had just made the sound, but then... I see it.

A Tusk Thumper.

The sound was from this 100+ ton machine of war throwing itself into the air, and landing on the ground nearly 300 yards away. I just watch, petrified, and it's slide my mind is slowing the entire sequence down to a slideshow; each moment of terror stretched out into excruciating minutes. My eyes are locked to the quadrupedic death machine as each arduous step brings it closer towards the town. I can hear ringing in my ears, and I go to bring my hand up to try to clear them, but my hand is crushing Ko-lee's wrist, and I can see tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry," I want to say, but I can't remember the words in Origin. "We need to go," I think, but I can't form my mouth to make the sounds. The ringing in my ears is warbling, and I realize that it's the after effects of a gunshot, and I look around to find who got shot, but Ko-lee is pulling me away, and yelling something at me.

I look back, but I can't see Sanza, just a dead body in front of the laughing Grineer man.

The Thumper is rotating its cannon, and it's pointing it at the townspeople.

We are leaving the settlement, we have left the settlement, and we are in the trees, and my ears are still ringing, so loudly, maybe from the sound of the cannon firing on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of children and parents and Nathom and Sanza and that lady I never learned the name of.

I can't see the settlement, but I can, because the buildings are on fire, and it's casting shadows through the trees, and I can still hear the ringing.

My hand is cramping from holding onto Ko-lee so tightly, from trying to stop her from running in, from getting herself killed, but she's been pulling me this whole time, and I peel my hand off of her wrist as she collapses on to the forest floor.

The ringing in my ears rises, and lowers, and it sounds like sobbing, it is sobbing and crying and fury and the sound of heart string snapping as Ko-lee curses the heavens in words I do not know.

All I can do, all we can do, is watch as the remnants of her whole life, of the people who took me in and saved mine when I was about to die in the forest, drift away as ash under the moonless sky.