Bad

She was numb now. She had always known it was just a matter of time. But this…

"Don't do this!" The girl in her hands said weakly as the Gara warframe pulled her towards towards the second portal. Towards her fate, which was not going to be pleasant. "You are Tenno! Not a Grineer slave!"

"I am sorry, girl." Esther said to the struggling girl. She wasn't going to break the restraints that Esther had slapped on her and she couldn't call for help mentally either with the hood device that the Queens had provided to dampen that. It also coincidentally blindfolded her. "But I have no choice. I wanted to find a better way. Find a way to help the unfortunate souls I was always running into. I cannot disobey them. I am trying and I cannot. I…. I am sorry."

"If my sister need my life, she has but to ask for it." The girl in her hands said sadly. "But the Queens are not you. You are better than them. Fight it, Esther! Fight it!"

"I am trying." Esther fought hard not to cry. It wouldn't help. "But even Tenno have limits and I am passed them. I hoped my kin would kill me, but they are all focused on Mishka's death. I understand vengeance, but they should have killed me."

"Where there is life, there is hope, Tenno Esther." The younger Tenno said sadly. "I do not hate you for this. I do not wish ill towards you. You were trying to do good and you were abused. The others will kill you for this, for what you are doing now."

"I know." Esther sighed as the portal tot he girl's doom flared just ahead. "I wish it were in time for you, but I… I…" She fought with every fiber of her being to pull the girl away from the portal, to throw her to safety, to do anything, but the resounding word in her mind would not be denied. Two voices. Neither of them were human or Tenno.

OBEY

"It is all right." The girl said sadly as Esther struggled. "It is all right, sister. You know what to do." Her tone was odd now. Not calm. Anticipatory?

"What?" Esther managed to push the hated compulsion back from her forebrain and stared at the girl in her hands even as several green armored forms stepped out of the portal and it flashed, reversing polarity.

"They have taken your mind from you but you can stop them." The girl held herself up straight as the Grineer approached to take the girl to her horrible fate. Esther could do nothing as the clones grabbed the girl and dragged her towards the portal. But the girl's shout was not a plea for help or a curse on her enemies. It held compassion and hope. "YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO!"

"Shut up, base!" A Heavy Gunner slapped the girl and the hood fell askew. Just before the entered the portal, Esther got a good look at the girl's face.

It was her own face

Esther's scream echoed into sudden stillness as the Grineer vanished into the portal with the girl and…

Reality

Esther jerked awake and bit back a scream as she saw the interior of her landing craft. She stared around wildly, but nothing was out of place. Everything in the tiny Scimitar assault craft was as it had been when she had gone for meditation, but instead, she had dreamed. And what a dream!

"Ordis. Any… Any word from the Elders?" Esther begged the ship Cephalon. "From anyone?" For once, Ordis was subdued.

"No, Operator." Ordis said quietly. He wasn't a 'normal' version any more than Esther was a 'normal' Tenno now. He too had fought the controls the Grineer had placed and they had hurt him just as badly as they had hurt her. Juil tried to help, but the Lich didn't know what she was doing. The other Cyberlancers wanted nothing to do with her. Both the Lich and Esther understood that all to well.

"I feared as much. They won't kill me on what I might do, Ordis." Esther shook her head. She did know what to do. If they would not stop her, she would. "Set course for Jupiter."

"Operator…" Ordis was very slow to respond, but the ship's engine thrummed. "They told you to get one of the girls."

"I know who and what you were, Ordis." Esther said quietly. "Would even the Beast of Bones want to see so many young lives snuffed out so that they can live forever?" Her feelings for the Queens were not unique. If she could reach out across time and space to end either of them, she would and damn the consequences. She knew Ordis felt the same way.

"No. That was one reason he killed who he did. One of many." Ordis said very quietly. His memory was fragmented by his own doing for good reason. The being he had been before being cursed to unending life as a Cephalon had been a monster. A ravening, bloodthirsty monster who lived only to kill. Or so most had thought. Esther knew why the one time mercenary named Ordan Karras had killed the Orokin he had and she applauded it. There were limits to anything but Orokin avarice. "He wanted to kill but not like that. Even he had limits, which the Orokin passed."

"That they did." Esther smiled grimly under her helmet. "You will drop me and go to Juil."

"Operator." Ordis sounded upset now. "I cannot do that."

"Juil will need you." Esther said with small sob. "Since Steel Meridian said 'No', they are all stuck. I gave them what I could, but I cannot obey the orders I was given. Even if I wasn't Tenno myself, the mere thought of taking any of the girls to the Queens is just… wrong. Hence the dream I just had." She shook her head. "They demanded I bring them Mishka and then the girl died before I could even get to Mars. I… I liked Mishka, maybe loved her as a sister? Most of us who met her did, no matter her parentage. She was an enemy at first and she was so kind. Even to me. I cannot allow any of the others to die by my hands, Ordis. I cannot. I cannot disobey, but I can interpret my orders. I have to maintain my cover, which means I have to do missions every so often. I have chosen a mission on Jupiter." She tapped one particular spot on the ship's navigation holo and it started to flash. Ordis gasped.

"Operator! No!" Ordis begged, the ship's engines shutting down! "There has to be another way!"

"Not for me." Esther said quietly. "The others will go on. It is all they can do, but me? I know what to do. I cannot hurt my kin and I cannot disobey the Queens' orders. I cannot kill myself and I cannot stop fighting. I cannot help Jull and the others and I cannot leave them like this. I will record a message for Juil and the others. Please, Ordis. Go to Juil. Please?" She begged.

"I…" Was Ordis crying? "You were trying to help them!"

"I did." Esther sighed deeply. "I grieve for those who have fallen and will fall due to the Queen's idiocy but this has to be. What I did is my responsibility, Ordis. No one else's. I knew that at the time and I know it now. It is not slavery, it was freedom from slavery and most of my kin agreed with that, if not with my methods. Juil will need help, Ordis. Please?" She pleaded again.

"Your logic is sound, Operator." Ordis said after a moment. "But I do not like this. I was left alone once. Dismantled. All but destroyed. Will they take me again?"

The fear in his tone called to Esther and she was quick to reassure him. He was an ancient Cephalon, far more like a real personality than any of the newer models. Far more 'human' than Simaris or Suda.

"Juil will help you and you can help her." Esther reassured him. "Even if the other Cyberlancers want nothing to do with her, she has studied what I can find of their ways and she feels a need to follow their tenets. To protect her kind from electronic attacks. Not the Grineer. Her kind."

"And none of them can die." Ordis sounded very quiet now. If there was anything he knew, it was the curse of immortality.

"No." Esther agreed. "You need them and they need you. No one accepted them. They are true outcasts, but they do not wish to be evil. I hoped Oracle could do something, but she has problems of her own. None of the other messages I sent got replies. I do not have a lot of time before this thing in my head takes full control, Ordis. When it does, they will insist I bring the others to be enslaved again. That you enslaved just like I am. I do not want to do that to you or to them! Please?" She begged. "With me out of the picture, you will be free to choose. I am what controls you for them. Ordis. Please!" She repeated.

For a long, long moment, there was utter silence in the landing craft.

"You have always been kind to me, a damaged, nearly destroyed Cephalon. A broken, half witted thing." Ordis was hushed. "You did not need to be."

"Yes, I did and do." Esther retorted. "Your origins do not matter to me. I was made during the Old War, Ordis just like you by the exact same people. For the exact same reason. Revenge. Ballas has a lot to answer for. Whatever the Sentients are doing to him cannot hurt him enough to make up for all the wrong he did to so many. Cephalons, humans, Tenno and others."

"True." Ordis heaved a sigh. His engine thrummed back to life. "I… I will miss you."

"Go to Juil." Esther urged him gently. "Help her and the others. They will all be upset." She scoffed. "Putting it very mildly. I am really the only thing that binds them together. They need a cause. A reason to continue or they will just be ravening beasts like they were before me. They do not want to go back to that. I wish I could help them find a cause, but I am lost. You are not, Ordis. They are not. Please help them though this and they can help you."

"The other Tenno?" Ordis inquired.

"Most of them won't understand. Some will." Esther said after a moment's thought. "What I have to do to stop the Queens' insane orders is anathema for our kind generally. Do not trust the other Tenno." She warned. "They have their own agendas. None of them can trust Juil or her kin." She sighed. "Some may blame you. I would have, myself, once upon a time, but I had my eyes opened rather forcefully. Different is not wrong. It is just different. It is how you act that defines right and wrong, not where you are from or what you look like. I did great wrong and innocents paid for it. I refuse to let that happen again."

"Juil and her kind are not not innocents, Operator." Ordis argued, but his heart wasn't in it. The trip would be short. Tenno assault craft defined the word 'fast'.

"They are combatants, Ordis." Esther corrected him gently as she knelt at a console and started to type She could dictate, but this felt right. More personal. "In many ways, they are innocents who now have no idea what to do next. Grineer are not human. Many see them as misshapen humans, but they are not. By human definitions, no Grineer is an innocent. They are created, just like I was and you were, to do a job. In the case of the Queens, to fight and kill. But they do not know any better. Do we hate them for ignorance? For lashing out at a world that hates, fears and hurts them?" She slumped a little. Multitasking had its limits and she was emotional. "I need to focus on writing, Ordis. Please get us there."

"I will." If the Cephalon's voice was husky, neither was going to comment. "For what it is worth, Operator. Die well."

Ordinarily, Tenno in warframes were functionally immortal. If the warframe was damaged beyond recovery, it could be repaired or replaced fairly easily. The energy within was what made the Tenno who and what they really were. Esther's energy was different. What had been done to her hadn't been physical. What the Queens had done had mangled her energy. corrupted it beyond any chance of recovery. If her warframe was broken…

When it was broken…

"We are here." Ordis said softly as the engine noise faded a little and a starscape with a huge orange planet in the middle of it took the place of swirling Void energy. Jupiter. None of the multitude of Corpus ships paid the Scimitar any mind. Some might detect it, but none could hit it and the Profit crazed fools had learned not to waste money on shots that had no chance of hitting. The planet grew swiftly enough that any pre-Orokin pilot or astronaut would probably have soiled their drawers, but neither the Cephalon nor the Tenno paid any attention. Orokin tech had its uses. "Entering atmosphere now."

"Go to Juil, Ordis." Esther said as she rose form her seat, saving the message she had written. She shunted her emotions aside with the skill of long practice. She needed to be calm right now. "She will need you."

"If you give me the right to choose, then I do not know right now what I will choose." Ordis said slowly. "For now? I will watch. I will aid your mission as best I can. It is what I am for. There are no other Tenno in the area."

"I know." Esther agreed as she hit controls to access her arsenal. Ordinally, she would mod her equipment for maximum efficiency. Not this time. She selected a Strun shotgun, a Lex pistol and a simple Skana that had been with her since she had woken from cryo. "I sent a message saying that I taking a mission as a solo run. Until I drop, no one should know which node I am striking. When they do, some may try to interfere. Try to talk me out of this. Jam their transmissions, please? I have to do this, Ordis and I have to do it now."

She gasped. The compulsion was growing in her mind. Jesse! They wanted her to take Jesse! Not happening! Like most Tenno, she did love Jesse and her love for the young, often impetuous Cyberlancer pushed the Queen's demand back for the moment. It would not last.

Esther strode to the airlock and paused as Ordis said something in Old Orokin. [Hail and farewell, Esther. Tenno. Operator. Friend.]

Esther fought past a choked up tongue to reply. [Hail and farewell, Ordis. Cephalon. Survivor. Friend.]

Then she was gone and Ordis started to cry.

Jupiter

Themisto node

Despite her knowledge of how this had to end, Esther was not a complete idiot. If she didn't do this right, she would revive and the Queens would punish her again, probably harsher than last time. Alad V was an anomaly in Corpus ranks. He had been an Executive, tried less than legal means to garner more power that he should have had (even by Corpus standards) had incurred the wrath of all of the Tenno, had fled, gotten himself infested and then cured of said infestation. Now, for some odd, convoluted, Profit driven reason, the crazy human was working with Sentients of all people! He had to know what would happen when they tired of him or he tried to betray them. Oh, who was she kidding? He would betray them the first chance he got and the Sentients likely knew that too. The Conduits and Amalgams were worrying, Sentient tech meshed with various of the groups from the system. All incredibly dangerous and all marketed by Alad V as the 'latest in security technology'.

Yes, it was incredibly secure against any but Tenno and the odd biological and technological fusions often gave even them pause for a bit. No, it wasn't safe for anyone to play with such things. Just looking at the horrid hybrids that were called Demolysts put into question the sanity of whoever bought such things from the mad Corpus executive. They were nasty things.

This time, she wasn't facing a Demolyst. She was facing something worse. Even as she struck with her skana, ending another Crewman, Alad V gloated again about how many Tenno he had slain to make his monstrosities. No alarms yet, but soon. She didn't want to fall to a Crewman, they couldn't be sure to destroy her warframe in a way that the Queens would not be able to repair or recover. There was really only one way to be sure. All she had to do was make enough of a mess and wait for it happen.

Then it did. The lights flickered. She felt a moment of worry as she waited for whoever was hunting her to announce themselves. She need not have worried. Working with Grineer had given her ample attention from the one she wanted it from right now.

"…."

She darted away from a patrol of Corpus who didn't see her and slid into a storage room. She slowly, ever so slowly holstered her skana, drew her shotgun and smiled as a flash of energy heralded Zanuka appearing nearby.

At the sound of the Strun firing, every Crewman, Moa and Osprey in the area would converge on this spot. They would all be too late. None would likely care that none of her weapons were modded. Neither was her warframe. She had taken all of her mods off to leave for Juil and the others. Zanuka wouldn't care. It had almost as much free will as she did. A pang of pity engulfed her for the poor souls destroyed for its creation, but Esther had to do this.

She would not let the Queens win!

She dodged a burst of energy and fired again, her shotgun's weak pellets glancing off the monstrosity's shields. It charged and she met it halfway, her unmodded skana in hand.