Burning smoke would have filled their lungs, if they had any to speak of. Eruptions of electronics, broken equipment and exploding gases blew their way through the ship, hovering over the bright rings of Saturn.
None of the remaining members of the squad were sure what had happened. One minute, the four Tenno were on a sabotage mission, the next, there were bits of Ember all over the place and everything was failing and falling apart. Oh, and burning. There’d been a Rhino Prime on the team at some point, but as soon as Ember exploded, he’d disappeared, running straight for extraction. Perhaps they’d done their sabotage job too well?
Out of the two remaining members, only the Titania, in her beautiful black, green and glowing blue armor had any idea what was going on. She was a professional, a Guide of the Lotus. She’d been through worse. That Rhino Prime was probably going to end up dead, since they needed to finish the sabotage, to get override the blast doors and make their escape. Rhino Warframes were always strong, but with so many enemies wandering around, a simple slip up could mean he’d never return.
Normally, that wouldn’t be an issue, but there were two problems here. Firstly, the ship was collapsing, meaning that the only way to get to the terminals was via her Razorwing mode – she’d have to travel alone through a very small pipe, complete the sabotage then come back the way she came to get to extraction. Of course, with the ship falling apart, the Grineer would send out their most dangerous units. Anything to stop the Tenno getting out alive.
The second problem was that she’d inadvertently brought a new recruit with her, thinking that this mission would be easy. The young Volt, barely having escaped from Captain Vor’s grip a few days ago, hadn’t yet discovered all of his abilities. The Volt’s performance so far had been mediocre to say the least, he had been incredibly slow comprehending what he had to do and how fast he had to move.
He had managed to discover a limited colour palette though, which explained why he was bright yellow with grey undertones.
Clearly something had gone horribly wrong.
The Titania waved at the Volt, pointing at a tube only she could fit through. He understood that only she could finish the mission. She then led him down a couple of corridors, where the extraction point was. It was a waste of her time, but the Volt would be able to defend himself more easily here, and once she’d finished the sabotage, he’d be here waiting for her. No point getting the new blood killed.
With the Volt somewhat safe, the Titania headed off. She only needed to use her Razorwing mode briefly, to get through the pipe, but it would be faster to go through the whole burning area like that. The pipe was only about a metre and a half long, a small opening about 20cm across.
The pipe opened up into a large, burning area, full of malfunctioning machinery. Several Grineer were desperately trying to fix a control console that she needed to hack. Most of the room though was evacuated. There wasn’t much in there that worried the Titania, apart from an unoccupied rampart in the corner of the room.
With a twirl of her wing-like appendages, the Titania took off and hovered down to the rampart. A flick of her wrist guided Razorwings into the back of one Grineer, while her Soma Prime took out the other two. Part of her felt bad, the Rhino Prime had tried to do the hack himself, only to be caught unaware by the rampart, which had very recently been occupied. Wherever that Rhino Prime had limped off to, he was probably gone for good.
She double-checked the room. Three entrances into the room, but nothing was coming.
The Warframe turned her attention towards the console, shifting back into her full-sized form. There was a barrel of something nasty nearby. It occurred to the Titania that she could have just shot that barrel, have it explode and kill off the Grineer repairmen, but she’d killed them already. The hack wasn’t hard to do. She didn’t have a cipher handy, never needed them, but the ship’s explosions had caused the screen to become cracked and flickery, making it hard to concentrate.
With the hack completed, the Titania could hear the sound of incoming Grineer troops, as well as the sound of doors unlocking.
Zooming back into her Razorwing mode, the Titania hurried herself up. The number of troops was far more than she expected, so she rushed as fast as she could back to the tube.
Too late though.
The rampart powered up behind her. The Titania did her best to dodge and move, but as she slowed down to enter the tube and escape, something hit her. Stray bullets. The rampart continued to fire, crushing the pipe behind the Titania, but it was enough to leave her stranded and bleeding out inside the pipe.
Ahead of the Titania, Grineer troops had realised what was going on and were trying to reach down the pipe to capture her. Goodness knows what they would have done with her. She tried to crawl backwards down the pipe, further away from their grasping hands. She didn’t have long now, and there were no revives to speak of.
With a sigh, the Titania closed her eyes, praying that hopefully the young Volt managed to escape.
Suddenly, something zapped outside the pipe and the Grineer pulled away. The sound of an electrified shield popped up, and a new hand reached towards the Titania. She opened her eyes, only to find herself being healed by a familiar green mist.
As the Titania pulled herself out of the pipe, she felt incredibly relieved at the sight of the young Volt, and gave him a little twirl as a thank you. The Volt somewhat awkwardly waved back, then activated his Speed ability, dashing off around the corner towards extraction. The Titania chased after him, leaving a trail of Razorwings behind her to deal with any remaining enemies.
The fire quickly started to pick up, but luckily, they reached the extraction point, just in time. The Lisets waited for them and quickly scooped the two Tenno up, flying them away to safety.
Aboard her ship, the Titania almost smiled. The new recruit had potential after all.