#Pluto drew sigma

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Warframe: A Taint On Pluto

“Delta carriage inbound.” Morv buzzed over the comms. 

“Roger. You’re clear for landing, Delta. Pad 5.” Sigor spoke into the console, watching the dropship’s thrusters slowly weaken as it settled comfortably on the landing zone. 

Sijor patted Eltz on the shoulder. “You can handle the rest right? Gotta go check on the armoury.” 

Eltz made an “ok” symbol with his hand. “No problem.” 

Sijor nodded and walked into the tunnels, just as the dropship shut its engines off. The large door opened and closed on Sijor just as he heard a scream. 

Confused, he turned around. It came from the dropship. He went to a nearby control console. “Eltz, what’s going on?” 

There was no reply for a few seconds, then a shrieking noise blasted over the intercom, with Sijor barely making Eltz’ voice out over the screaming. 

“LOCKDO—INFEST—ON THE DROPSH—AHHH!” The console cut off. 

Sijor’s blood went as cold as the asteroid he stood on. 

“Attention all units,” be broadcasted to the entire base. “Infested life forms located on Landing Zone C. Report to your nearest armoury immediately and assemble at Gate C1.  This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.” 

Sijor sprinted to his locker, and from it he pulled his prized weapon, albeit old, a Lenz. He took a breath to calm his pounding heart, then rushed out to face the Infested. 

He was one of the first few crewmen to reach the tunnel. MOA proxies were already deployed, waiting. This would be a bottleneck, given that there was no other entrance into the base aside from this one tunnel. Which meant that they would all pour in here. The thought made him shiver.

The room was silent apart from more crewmen and MOAs arriving in a panic, before falling into formation. 

There was a screeching sound on the door. Then another, then a frenzy of the scratching and banging erupted. Still, the door held. 

Clang! The sound echoed, not from the door, Sijor realised, but the… 

“Vents! They’re coming from the vents!” Sijor shouted, just as the grates were torn from its fixtures, and a slew of creatures burst through. 

They were quickly dispatched by the battalion, but more emerged from the vents. The scratching sounds became louder. 

Sijor’s superior took command. “Retreat steadily! We’ll get an evac at Zone B! Keep firing!” He tapped a device on his wrist, and two Oxium Ospreys charged towards the vents. The simultaneous conflagrations from their attack caused metal and tiling to cave in, blocking it temporarily. 

Just then, the door was shredded open. Claws scratched and sliced the thick steel with a frenzy that never seemed to tire out. Soon, the gap was widening till the small ones could crawl through, then the larger ones emerged from the gap. The first few tore themselves apart from the sharp metal that protruded from their crudely made hole. It did nothing to stop them, as more simply replaced their numbers. 

The Corpus slowly backed through the door, keeping their rifles trained on the charging Infested. Sijor fired his bolts at the hole, detonating arrows keeping them at bay, for now. 

Soon, a respectable distance was gained from the slow progress the Infested made. 

“Seal the door!” Zark commanded. Sijor slammed his fist against the console, and the door shut. It was weaker than the circular tunnel door to the outside, but it would delay them till they could be extracted. 

“Let’s move!” The Corpus didn’t need to be told twice. They marched quickly. Sijor saw Zark tap his console, presumably opening a comms link to the Crownship in orbit over Pluto. 

“Hammer Sigma, requesting dropship. Site Oxium-12D has been compromised by Infested life forms. We need a —“ Zark’s voice cut off. Sijor looked at his superior. 

“What the — we’re clear! WE ARE CLEAR, BY THE SEVEN, SEND A DROPSHIP NOW!” He roared into his device. 

The rest of the Corpus crewmen marched in silence. Sijor’s heart skipped a beat. They wouldn’t. 

Zark stopped running, staring at his wrist. His Arca Scisco hung loosely on his right arm. 

“Commander?” Sijor asked. 

Zark raised his head to look at him. “They’re not sending extraction. They think we’re infected.” 

“Are there any dropships on the other landing zones?” A crewman in the crowd asked. 

Zark shook his head morosely. 

“This is it, men,” He said. “Do what you will.”

The sound of a rifle exploded in the hallway. Everyone turned to see a headless crewman, his right arm limply holding his Lanka, barrel smoking, bloodstained. 

Sijor was unable to tear his eyes away from the corpse. Would he do the same? What was the point of living now, without wealth, without hope of surviving this onslaught?

A few more crewmen followed the corpse’s example. Zark didn’t stop them.

“I’m going to leave the site. Maybe we can get to Site G.” Sijor broke the silence. 

Everyone looked at him. It was a sucidal mission. Site G was half a day of travelling via Coildrive. The bitter cold would likely kill them all before they even got to the halfway point, but between dying of hypothermia or having his head torn off by the Infested, the choice was clear to Sijor. 

And the rest seemed to realise this as well, as he heard footsteps trail behind him. 

The group emerged from the tunnel, only to hear the bone-chilling snarls echoing around them. 

“They went...across the mountain,” One of the crewmen said in horror.

“Go! Go! Go!” Zark shouted. They broke into a run. To hell with discipline. 

Behind him, Sijor heard the cries of the creatures as they detected fresh meat. The elevator to the bottom of the valley was just in front of them. A few more steps.

Sijor was shoved to the ground suddenly. A crewman overtook him. Bastard.

The crewman pressed the ‘descend’ button on the console. Just as a ground-breaking boom shook the rest of the slower ones to their knees. 

Sijor had one last look at that crewman’s visor before the elevator plummeted, along with the crewman. A guttural scream followed as the creaking of metal stopped. 

They were at the bottom.

He slowly got to his feet and saw the encroaching swarm of Infested. Damn it. He drew his Lenz. 

Sijor fought for his life. His explosive arrows lit up the night with lithium gas, while barrages of pulsefire kept the Infested back, but the standstill was gradually being lost to the ever growing tide of it. For every Infested killed, two more replaced it. 

Sijor looked on in horror, sure that his living colleagues noticed it as well, that among the sea of monsters, all snarling and surging thoughtlessly into the kill zone, were his fallen associates and MOA proxies, their bodies twisted and moulded with the strain, blotches of ugly green spots and red, pulsing veins bursting from the skin. Their movement was rigid, as if they were hung on strings like puppets, while an invisible force animated them from above. Sijor thought he saw Zark’s uniform in the midst of the sea of rotten flesh. 

Even more horrid were the proxies. How a virus strain could infect lifeless robots were beyond Sijor’s comprehension — he had heard the stories but never believed it — yet the Technovirus did it, and he believed it now. Somehow, the Infested gave the MOAs life; life in the worst possible way. They bounded towards Sijor, even as he cut them down, shrieking and spawning in their death throes. They were not robots, he thought, not anymore. 

Amidst the visualisation of a possible death staring into the rotting jaws of one of those beasts, his hope slowly diminishing like a flame snuffed out by Pluto’s breaths, he thought of the tales he had heard. 

“A protector. The Guardian of Mars. Invoke his sacred name, and he will come,” Blha’rak whispered to him once, his eyes glowing with zeal, with utmost faith sealed in his mind. 

Sijor had not thought much about his friends’ beliefs, dismissing it as a myth for the Martians to hold onto. The Guardian was long dead since the fall of the Orokin. 

Still, when one is on the brink of death, he had nothing to lose. 

“Inaros,” he murmured, the word lost in the sounds of war. He fired another shot, just as his bow fizzled and died. He cursed, unsheathing his standard issue Prova.  

With more firepower lost on the Corpus’ side, the Infested gained more ground. More crewmen fell and were infected. The battle was ending.

A quadruped lunged and sank its fangs into Sijor’s right arm. He roared in pain, stabbing the roof of its mouth with his blade. It shrieked and died, twitching from the electricity. 

He dropped to the ground, breathing hard. The last vestiges of hope to see another day faded away as he gazed at the growing tide of Infested advancing. He lay there, trembling from the cold and the fear, cowardly as it was, resigned to his fate. 

Then he felt a warm breeze from above, and the ground in front of him split open. Sijor raised his eyes to see a new figure amidst the Infested wave, adorning armour the colour of Mars. Tiny insects scuttled all over him, encasing him in a living shell. In his hand was a giant blade, stained with Infested blood. 

Slowly, in amazement, Sijor got to his feet, him and the remaining survivors watching in awe as the Tenno began their dance. 

The Tenno took a step forward, knee bent, swinging his sword in an arc forward, cutting through the charging monsters. It swung around once more for another slash, taking the second wave out instantly. 

A small swarm approached from behind, and Sijor was about to yell a warning, but the Tenno knew. It swept its right leg in a twirl, adjusting its posture to meet the assailants. One cleave and they were dead as well. 

An abomination barged through the horde, constructed of many of the creatures, as well as Corpus skin and bone, unleashing a shriek that sent Sijor and his few colleagues stumbling back in utter terror. But the Tenno was ready. 

In one swift move, with his back initially turned towards the monstrosity, he bent over backwards, his entire weight balanced on his left leg, his right providing a counterbalance. And his blade was thrust towards its open mouth. 

Shink! 

The aberration went silent and still. But the Infested did not stop their advance. The Tenno withdrew its bloodstained weapon and leapt into the air with no hesitation, spinning with grace. It grasped the hilt of its sword with both hands, and slammed. 

The ground ruptured once more as a wave of sand burst from his blade. The remaining Infested shrieked and clawed at their blinded eyes. 

The Tenno, the blade still firmly sunk beneath the rock, stood unmoving for a moment. Its shoulders rose and sank slowly. A deep breath of total calm, amidst the screaming of the infected dead. 

It pulled its broadsword out, and for the last time, cleaved the remaining Infested, until there was only silence save for the howling wind. 

Then the Tenno faced them, and the Corpus stepped back, speechless. Only Sijor breathed, “Inaros. T-thank you, you saved us all.” 

There was a murmur of assent. The Tenno was silent. It strode forward, sheathing its weapon behind its back. 

A voice emanated from the warframe. “I am not your salvation. I am the cleanser.” It sounded like a child. It made the statement far more bone-chilling. 

A growing fear spread over the small ranks of Corpus survivors. They took another step back. 

The Tenno drew a pistol from its waist. “I truly am sorry.” It said. 

He wasn’t, Sijor thought, staring at the barrel pointed at his face.