Sneaks

She was very good at what she did.

Some said she was an arrogant hothead with more guts than sense but she knew better. Many of the places she went, you had to have total confidence in yourself and your abilities or things ended poorly. She wasn't the biggest, the bravest, or the strongest of beings. She knew this. What she was, was sneaky.

Contrary to popular belief, Tenno were not the only ones who could get into the Void. It was far easier for them. It just wasn't fair how easy it seemed for the tin men to get in and out of places sometimes. It probably had something to do with the 'Space Mom' wannabe that they all followed with slavish obedience. Such devotion was unthinkable. It was...

She jerked in her hiding place as another patrol passed the duct she had concealed herself in. At least this time it was Corpus. Grineer were loud and dumb for the most part, but they more than made up for it with numbers that could only be called overwhelming. No matter how sneaky a person might be, three or four thousand clones swamping an area made stealth pretty pointless. They were also damned persistent. She had managed a few times to get in and out of Grineer facilities, but it was often luck these days and she despised relying on luck. She had been forced to call in several favors when a few of those forays had gone bad and while the ones she had contacted had never called in said favors... She knew they would. No one did anything for free. Not even Tenno.

Tenno.

She wasn't sure where she stood on the Tenno. She wasn't sure what they were except relics from a bygone age. She had seen enough Orokin facilities and relics herself. Mostly working for that slime Baro Ki'teer and if he ever groped her again, she would show him the business end of her Lex again. And this time, she would pull the trigger. She worked alone. She lived alone. She fought alone. It was how she was. If he wanted companionship, he could buy it. He wouldn't get it from her. She was free and glad of it. Like Tenno.

No one dared hold Tenno but Alad V and that had cost him dearly on many occasions. The Corpus prattled on and on about how they owned any Orokin technology -including warframes- but when possession was more than 9/10s of the law in the Origin system... She had seen more than a few 'disputes' between Grineer and Corpus devolve into bloody melees when the two sides had found Orokin tech that they had coveted. She avoided such messes. The clones were wildly haphazard with their aim and the Corpus automatically assumed that anyone who wasn't with them was against them. The consequences for capture by either side were unpleasant. She had been through both Grineer and Corpus interrogations and would rather never do it again. Especially if it meant owing another favor.

She wasn't sure if Tenno were flesh and blood, machines, some kind of energy beings or something even stranger inside the odd armor. She had heard all kinds of stories, most wildly outlandish. No one she had ever met had possessed even the slightest of proof. Not even Baro, curse his philandering ways. She was curious, like many. But she also knew not to push. On several occasions, she had seen what Tenno left in their wakes. Her heart was hardened by years of solo wandering and her soul was jaded by all of the evils she had been forced to put up with whole she grew. But what she had seen...scared her. More than any Corrupted security force in the Void when a single misstep meant a painful death if she was lucky or an eternity of slavery if she was not. More than Grineer tortures. More than Corpus brainwashing. Tenno scared her spitless, although she would never admit that to anyone except herself.

But now? Tenno were waking in larger and larger numbers. They could not be denied. The Grineer would fall, eventually. Tenno had brought down the Orokin for goodness sakes! They were warrior gods of legend come to life and...

She snarled silently at herself. She was distracting herself from the job. Not even a hard job. Get in, grab an artifact, get out. Simple. There were no Tenno here, or the guards she had seen patrolling would have been far more alert. She keyed her scavenged Orokin tech Invisibility system live and stepped out of the duct. No alarms sounded, no sentries shot at her. So she relaxed as she started warily for the next waypoint to her goal.

Something about this job was bothering her. She had almost not taken it even though it had been the first of its kind in some time. Maybe that was it? She hadn't done a regular heist in some time. Usually she focused on information retrieval. It was fast and she didn't have to carry anything that might slow her down or affect her suit's systems in odd ways like some of the Orokin stuff did. She dreaded picking up another mod from an Orokin Vault. The last time she had done that -for Baro coincidentally- it had slowed her suit's systems to a crawl. She had been forced t pick her way out past many, many Corrupted guards. If her Invisibility had failed, even for a moment...

She froze in place as another patrol of Corpus appeared in the distance. This one had one of their new soldiers with them. She wasn't sure what the Corpus called them. Combas? Scramba? It wasn't anything she ever wanted to get any firsthand experience with. She knew some of them could disrupt Invisibility. She had seen one such team... surprise a Tenno in such a way. It had been a surprise to the Corpus as well, one that the hapless slaves to the all encompassing machine had not lived long enough to regret. She eased to the side, her neural feeds pinging in distress from the Corpus soldier's interference, but to her relief, it didn't cancel her Invisibility. If needed, she would fight, it was what she did when she had no choice. But she was no Tenno.

Gah! She was thinking about them again! She jerked as an alarm sounded in the distance. What the hell?

The patrol she had been evading turned and ran off, leaving her way clear. But then her heart plummeted. The oxygen level in the area was dropping fast. Someone had cut off the life support! Her suit had contingencies for such, but they took a lot of power. Too much power to maintain the Invisibility as well. She shook her head and hurried her steps. It wasn't far. If she could get to her objective and leave before the...

Her eyes went huge under her helmet as she saw a form in a dark blue bodysuit enter a door ahead of her. That was her objective! That wasn't a Corpus or a Tenno! Someone was trying to steal her loot! She started forward and froze. Something was very wrong. She hadn't lived as long as she had by ignoring her gut feelings and now, her gut was screaming at her to flee. She stared at the door and slumped a bit, then she turned.

What the hell? The hall behind her was filled with troops! How the hell had they gotten in there without her seeing or hearing anything? She kicked herself The alarm was still blaring. But... this was odd. Where were the MOAs? The Ospreys? It was just Crewmen, seven of them all told. Corpus of course, and all heavily armed. She drew her pistol and had a moment's warning. It wasn't enough.

She spun, but didn't even see the Prova swing before it hit her, knocking her instantly unconscious.

"Medic."

Commander Horatius, Corpus Special Forces, kept his preferred melee weapon in hand as he watched the still form at his feet. This woman wasn't a warrior by all accounts, but she was darn good. He kicked the pistol out of her limp hand.

"Sir." One of the team medics stepped up, scanner whirring. "Out like a light. Nice hit." Horatius grunted and the medic knelt beside their fallen quarry. "Vitals are strong." He injected her with something. "We have her."

"Clean up." The Commander snapped and the others moved to obey.

They would erase any trace of their team's intrusion as well as hers. They needed to be gone before the massive distraction that had been promised -and arrived right on time- vanished like the stellar winds. Tenno were hard to quantify and very hard to plan for. One Tenno might fight for thirty or more minutes simply for the joy of pushing him/her/itself to their limits. Another would stay just long enough for the Lotus to sound recall, usually about five minutes. It went seriously against the grain to work with Tenno after so long working against them, but war made for very strange bedfellows and he would sooner trust even a mercurial Tenno than anyone on the Corpus Board of Directors.

He wasn't stupid enough to trust the woman his medic was now rolling onto a stretcher for transport. He went still as the door nearby opened and a form in a dark blue bodysuit stepped out. The male form nodded to Horatius and took off at a run. Horatius shook his head slightly, but did not react otherwise. Allies had to trust one another, but it was hard. It was so hard.

Good thing Special Forces didn't do easy.

"Three minutes." The Commander of the Special Forces said firmly. The medic nodded and the others worked faster. They didn't want to be here when the Executive in charge discovered what had just gone missing. A head would roll for losing such an artifact. And Horatius didn't want it to be his.

"Ready to transport, sir." The medic reported as the stretcher rose from the floor on its own dedicated antigravity system.

"Right." Horatius started off, the medic and gurney following, the team would catch up. They always did. Then he jerked to a halt.

"Commander Horatius..." A silky voice sounded from the group of soldiers and mechs ahead of them. "What a pleasant surprise."

"You have bigger problems than me and a wanna be thief." Horatius didn't bother to lie. The Executive had probably been watching via hidden cameras. The Corpus loved those. Just like they loved arbitrary rules that benefited themselves. "I got my quarry."

"You did not try to apprehend the other." The executive snapped.

"You told me not to enter the room." Horatius replied evenly. But his Penta was ready. The medic beside him had a Dera ready as well. Neither was aimed -unlike the troops ahead of them,- but it wouldn't take much. "Correct me if I am wrong... 'You may not use any proxies. You may not access any restricted areas. You are not welcome here and I want you gone.' Sound familiar?" Horatius' tone didn't change, but the Executive snarled at him. "We could have worked together. You didn't want to. You got what you wanted. But if you push this, you will die here."

"Are you threatening me, Commander?" The executive sounded somewhere between humor and worry.

"I have my mission." Horatius said firmly. "It was given to me by the Board." No lie, just... not the whole truth. "You neither wanted nor needed my help. What happens in the rest your facility is your business. My business is concluded with this one." He nodded slightly to the stretcher.

"You are not leaving." The Executive started to speak again, but he was cut off.

"Stand down. Now." Every eye went to the side as a pair of forms appeared from a cross corridor. Both humans. One in... a habit. Horatius was hardly the only one to hiss as the Reverend Mother of the Corpus Clergy stepped out, followed by the man in the blue bodysuit. "Executive Frolisk. Antagonizing Special Forces is stupid. Don't be an idiot. Agent Jemo? Please replace the artifact. This unscheduled drill is over." The man in the bodysuit nodded to her and stepped back towards the door he had come out of earlier. "Your security needs work, Executive Frolisk."

Horatius was reeling. What the hell was she doing here?

The designated mouthpiece of the Corpus Clergy looked tired. As well she should. She was needed everywhere at once. She had so many demands on her time, even with all of the Clergy helping her, it was a crushing burden. She was up to the task, but Horatius could see the strain in her eyes.

"You ran a drill... on my station... without telling me?" The Executive looked like he could spit.

"Yes." The Reverend Mother stepped to where Horatius stood. The Commander was working hard to keep his face under control as she winked at him.

"Why?" The Executive snarled.

"None of your troops have found any Tenno, have they?" The Reverend Mother asked. She wasn't looking at the Executive, but one of the soldiers who looked at the Executive before shaking his head. "Commander Horatius has his mission and I have mine. I work to safeguard the company, Executive Frolisk. You see me and the Commander as adversaries, but we are not. If a Tenno had come in here, every one of your people would be dead. An unscheduled drill is just what we need to see the holes in the security response." She held up a hand as the Executive spun to glare at the Crewman who had shaken his head. "And not to blame them. It is not their fault, Executive. It is our duty to prepare our people for such things. The only way to know about the problems is to try things. Things like this. Commander?"

"The troops are not bad, Ma'am. They are just not used to enemies that are hard to see." The Commander said quietly, mind working in overdrive. "If they were facing Grineer, they would do well. But Tenno and Infested would tear this place apart."

"That is generally what happens and there simply are not enough resources to defend everywhere adequately, Commander." The Reverend Mother said with a shrug. "We have had that discussion. Can you give me a report on what should be done to improve this place's defenses?"

"Ma'am..." Horatius groaned.

"I am not asking you to write it! I know better." The Reverend Mother said with a snort. "'Place sucks, scuttle it' is not a proper and documented report." Horatius had to smile at that. He had written a report to the Board with those exact words once. The Executive was staring at her as the man in the blue bodysuit returned to stand beside her. "Executive, this is not your fault. This is everyone's fault. The entire Corpus has been lax, security wise for far too long. We need to improve and it will be hard to convince people of the need for the expenditures. Not without clear and concise demonstrations. If we had told you, you would have done better, but it wouldn't have been real if you have time to prepare. Real combat is not fair in any way. We needed to see how well you did with no warning at all." She shook her head. "We need proof. Documented proof. Even the Commander didn't know I was here. He didn't know this wasn't a real raid, but he had orders not to hinder the one who stole your artifact."

That was...true. Horatius gave the Clergywoman a glance that promised a long and 'interesting' conversation later.

"And that one?" The Executive nodded to the stretcher. "She was trespassing."

"Commander Horatius was ordered to 'procure' that one." The Reverend Mother said firmly. "For us." Horatius did not move as the rest of his team moved to flank him. All stood ready. If it came to a firefight, the Corpus troops ahead of them had no chance at all. "She fell into his trap nicely. We will take her and use her as we must. You do not wish to cross us on this, Executive. Far more than your profits ride on this. Come on, Executive Frolisk." The Clergywoman pleaded. "We serve the Company. So will she." She nodded to the unconscious woman.

"So... what else needs to be done?" The Executive asked. "And how much will it cost?"

Horatius relaxed a little as the troops in front of him lowered their weapons, but not totally. He wouldn't relax until they were away from here with their quarry.

"That is why I brought Agent Jemo." The Reverend Mother replied as the man in the blue bodysuit bowed to the Executive. "He is an expert on security. He will survey the site and make suggestions. That is all they will be. Suggestions." This was a command to the man beside her and then blue garbed agent bowed again. "And get yourself into proper attire." This was also a command.

"At once, Reverend Mother."

Horatius had to smile, glad his helmet was closed. She was not always easy to deal with, but boy, she was good at what she did.

A high security cell in a highly secure facility

The Reverend Mother sat with their newest 'guest' and worked hard not to fret. A lot was riding on this. On the woman who lay restrained on the bunk now. Horatius hadn't been happy with her, but when the Executive had seen too much, she had been forced into damage control mode. Good thing agents of the Lotus thought fast on their feet. Jemo would do a full survey and leave a few well hidden holes that Clergy or Lotus agents could exploit. She was aware of the woman waking before the other was fully awake. But then the woman hissed as she realized she was restrained and her bodysuit had been removed. It had been replaced with a white shipsuit that was utterly devoid of tech. For several reasons.

"Good morning, Maroo. I am the Reverend Mother." The nun said quietly.

"We need to talk."