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Connection V2 part 4

Ordis had been out of his mind with worry, he'd told them when they were on their way. Because they didn't have a comms HUD on their non-warframe eyes, he had created a projection of his little cube hologram in the Liset, over the nav console.

He was also not taking them to the Orbiter.

"Ordis is taking you to Strata Relay," he said, primly. "As soon as the reports came in about what was happening on Lua, Kali announced that it was preparing food parcels on Strata Relay with the relay residents. There's enough for everyone. That's what it has been doing."

"Yeah, well, tell her to hold two for Tirse," Kelth mumbled.

"What was that, Operator?" Ordis asked. "Ordis needs to turn up his audio receptors, ha ha!"

"It- it was nothing," they said. They had no idea what had gotten into them. Had the regard the Lotus held for them gotten to their head? Of course Tirse had more resources, more leadership, more Tenno on her ship than just herself. Kelth hadn't led the resistance to the successful overthrow of the Orokin.

Their memories of - well, everything, but especially that - were still fuzzy, and Kelth had some time to kill. They decided to use it to try to fill in some of their memory gaps. "Do you remember what happened to end the Orokin?" Kelth asked Ordis, hoping to get a comprehensive overview of everything, and to see how much of it they could recall from their own memories.

But for all their hopes, he remained silent. "Ordis?" Kelth prodded, now a bit worried.

"They all died," he said, in the tone of the glitch, but it was unusually devoid of rage, instead just sounding incredibly pleased. Kelth jumped at the sudden switch. "You and yours murdered them wherever you could find them. And this time, they stayed dead."

Kelth was shocked, but no inspection of their own hazy memories proved Ordis' glitch wrong. They got a sinking feeling. "Why did we do that?"

"Because if you hadn't betrayed them, they would have successfully sold you out to the Sentients," Ordis replied, now with stronger hints of satisfaction, but also a return of the deeper, simmering rage.

Sentients… A race created by the Orokin and sent out to terraform distant worlds, who had returned to topple their creators. They had realised that the Orokin would destroy anything they could get their hands on, just for their own entertainment.

This wasn't right. Why were they ever in the opportunity to betray the Orokin? Why did they ever serve the Orokin?

They must've spoken out loud, because Ordis' glitch let out a harsh bark of laughter. "You didn't have a choice. They had enslaved you, like they had everyone."

The memories burst behind their eyes. The woman from the memory on Lua - Margulis, they remembered - had been their caretaker, after… they couldn't remember. But she had taken all of them, all the children, the Tenno, under her wing. Until their power over warframes had been discovered, and Ballas had turned every last one of them into child soldiers for his empire.

Alongside memories of protecting civilians from the Sentient invasion were at least as many of squashing uprisings. Civilians, lesser clans of soldiers, rebel formations, all had fallen before their blade.

They were pretty sure that their final betrayal of their despicable masters was just a drop compared to the ocean of cruelty they had been made to commit.

The Liset arrived at the relay.

"Oh, we're here already!" Ordis said. His normal voice sounded almost fake, after the brutal honesty of the glitch. Kelth didn't get up from their seat, just stared into the middle distance. "Operator?"

"Mm?"

"We have arrived at the relay! You should go and pick up the- oh, never mind."

"What?" Kelth reluctantly released the fastenings and got up from the seat, leaning heavily on their right side, curiosity piqued by the change of plans.

"Kali is on its way to personally deliver our parcel?" Ordis said. He sounded unsure about it.

"Sure, why not," Kelth said, still too shaken by the memories and revelations to try to act normal.

"Operator?" Ordis asked. "Are you… alright? Did anything happen? Did Ordis say anything wrong?"

Kelth tried to come up with a way, any way, to answer that question. Sure, nothing had happened. But also, way more had happened than they'd known, and none of it was okay. They had blood on their hands, and they didn't know for how much of it they were responsible. Who else they could blame. If it was even right to blame anyone else for-

"Operator, Kali is here!"

For Void's sake, they got no rest around here. "Let it in," Kelth said, stepping up to the ramp. Ordis let down the ramp, and there stood Kali, still in the red metal shell that Kelth knew.

Sheepish, they waved at it. It waved back. It was eerie to see it and not hear its constant chattering in their mind. However, the second the ramp touched the ground, she flew up it, dropping something onto the floor inside the Liset, and swept Kelth up in a big hug.

Kali was warm. Warframe temperature receptors weren't sensitive enough to pick up on the cosy-warm that was Kali.

After a second of shock, Kelth put up a token protest against this treatment. The revelations were just causing them the jitters right now, and this didn't mesh well with it, however well-intentioned Kali was.

Kali released them, but they got the distinct impression of it being incredibly amused.

"Ordis said you were bringing supplies?" Kelth asked, hopeful and trying hard to push down the horrible memories they'd been dwelling on earlier. The thought of food itself didn't feel very good right now, but their stomach was empty and did not care.

Kali nodded and pointed at a big box she'd brought onto the Orbiter. She went and rummaged around in it, and held up a brown paper bag with something - it smelled good, and that was enough for the horrible noises to start emerging from Kelth's stomach again. Embarrassed, they grabbed for the bag, which Kali easily let go. They fumbled it open, discovering… something.

Vaguely, they remembered… old lessons on different cultures, different etiquettes, stories from different times. They didn't know from where. This was jerky, they had never seen it before in their life, and it smelled heavenly.

Kelth tore into it.

"Operator?" Ordis asked. "Kali is asking to come with us, to visit the Orbiter."

"Sure," Kelth said around a mouthful of jerky. She'd earned that visit, they figured.

They settled back into their safety seat for the journey, bringing the bag of jerky with them. Kali took the seat on the other side of the cockpit, but not before reshuffling the limbs of their discarded warframe into a more dignified pose. Kelth felt a pang of guilt at that, at seeing the state it had been in - but regardless, it was made of gunmetal. There was no way they would've been able to move it without Transference, and right now, they didn't remember how to do that. So.

Kali settled into its own seat, the ramp was pulled back up, and they were off.

---

Kelth ate the whole bag of jerky on the journey back to the Orbiter, resolving to just stare longingly at the box that had been wedged between Kali's feet for safety. They docked without issue, and Kali and Kelth got up from their seats as Ordis lowered the ramp. Without signing anything, Kali handed them another bag - dried vegetable chips. They started in on it with as much gusto. Crunchy.

Then, Kali did sign something: "Can I look around?"

Now, Kelth had had enough of their hunger sated for some of their common sense to have returned. "Why? Is there something wrong?"

"There is a room on your Orbiter that houses some Infestation, no?"

The stinky room. Warframes did not have very good smell receptors, but they had enough to pick up on the scent-trails of free-roaming Infestation. Kelth pulled up their nose at the memory. "Yes, there is, isn't it standard on all Orbiters?" Kelth was a bit defensive about it - Ordis always had comments about it dirtying his ship, but the two of them couldn't get rid of it, no matter how they tried.

Kali's shoulders shook a bit - quiet laughter. "Yes, it is! Important to maintain a warframe. I have some tricks to teach yours." It looked meaningfully back at their warframe, which still laid on the floor of the Liset.

Kelth scrunched up their face, confused, vegetable chips momentarily forgotten. "Tricks?"

"You'll see."

And with that, Kali was off. Kelth heard the squishy sound of the nasty room's door opening and closing. They grabbed another vegetable chip.

"Operator, we should sort the rest of the contents of the box," Ordis said. "And - Kali says that there are more parcels being organised, right now, but we first need more amenities on the ship for those." He sounded disgruntled about that, and continued. "Ordis has already ordered a crew for refurbishing one spare room of the Orbiter to be your living quarters, including sanitation and food preparation. However, it seems that those services are rather niche, and currently in extremely high demand…"

Kelth chewed thoughtfully. They had joked about it, but didn't actually want to live on a relay for a week before moving again. Frankly, they just wanted to sleep for - well, not that long again, but they just wanted to be left alone for a while. That shouldn't be too much of an ask, right? "How many credits do we still have?"

"Ordis is glad you asked! Enough to bribe them."

In the infested room - the Helminth room, their memory suddenly supplied - they heard a clanking noise, like Kali had just hit her head on something.

"Kali wants to let you know that it is alright?" Ordis said, normal again, and sounding confused. "Why-"

"Can you bribe the engineers to push us to the front of the queue?" Kelth asked quickly. If they had had to spend all their free time earlier on high-profile missions, the equally high bounties they had earned for them had better be paying off now.

"Oh, what an ingeniously devious idea!" Ordis said, excited. "Yes, by chance we do! Ordis will see it done immediately."

---

The repair crew was noisy. And nosy. They were looking at Kelth constantly as they walked past carrying machinery, so Kelth had resolved to sitting in a corner, continuing to chew on their vegetable chips, and glaring right back at them.

One had asked Ordis what 'the kid' was doing on a warship. Ordis had blown up a little bit at them - surprisingly, without the glitch, and even more surprisingly, without blowing their cover.

The Tenno as a whole had decided pretty quickly that it wouldn't be good if word got out that they were all teenagers. Child soldiers, really. Still the system's terrifying black ops, but also children. They'd rather just have the reputation of the first. It made their jobs a bit easier.

At some point, Kali had exited the Helminth room, and quickly flashed them a thumbs-up. Then, she had proceeded to jog up the ramp to where the Liset was docked, collected their lifeless warframe from the floor, and jogged back down with it, back into the Helminth room. Kelth had had some protests at this.

"Don't worry! Helminth can now upgrade your warframe. He will be good as new - better, even," was all she had said. And, "Best not to speak of it with strangers in the house."

Kelth could only guess that it had meant the works crew. Kali had gone back into the Helminth room. Kelth had no idea what for, as it had vigorously waved them away when they'd tried to get close. "No! Poison to you!" Sure. Fine. They would just. Go sit in a corner and passive-aggressively munch at the poor grunts trying to install a fridge in a disused spaceship room.

Maybe it was their resting bitch face, maybe it was Ordis' constant cheery check-ins, but the crew got the job done faster than Kelth had thought. And, thank the Void, they were gone again as soon as they could get off the ship. Good.

No sooner had the Liset docked again - there may be several spare rooms on board, but there was only one dock, and the crew had needed it for their own landing craft - than Kali had jumped out of the Helminth room.

"Kelth!" she signed, with big motions, tail wagging - enthusiasm, and lots of it. On the way back, Kelth had managed to tell both her and Ordis that they'd remembered their non-callsign name, and they'd both accepted it without issue. "Kelth, there's someone who would like to meet you again."

"What, on the Orbiter, right now?" Kelth asked, laughing a little. "Where did they stow away? Wait, what do you mean, again?"

Kelth had been expecting a baby kavat or something. When Kali gestured back to the Helminth room's half-rotten door, they altered their expectations to the infested strain of kubrow they'd been hearing about.

But when their own warframe came out of the room, stumbling and holding on to the doorframe, their jaw dropped.

Memories flooded them, for the umpteenth time that day. Deep teals and dull yellows, utilitarian, sleek lines and an inexplicable, flattened horn jutting out of the front of his face. They'd always only seen him in reflections and photographs, because he'd never been able to walk without their Transference before. But they knew his mind as well as they did their own, because together, they were the lethal unit known as Hyena on the battlefield, known for Kelth's patience and plans and his precision and weapons mastery.

Apparently Kali had a method to switch off whatever mechanism prevented a warframe from running around on their own without an active Tenno Transference connection, and had taught it to the Helminth, who had applied it to him.

"Hello, Kelth", he signed.

A sob escaped Kelth as they ran towards him. He stumbled forwards from the door, letting go from the frame and falling to his knees, and wrapped them up in a hug so tight it squeezed the air from their lungs.

Sufford.

#rift noises #rift lore #and finally our initial cast is complete!#even though sufford isn't gonna be doing too much yet in the next one either

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