Chapter Text
The Orbiter hummed at a low, familiar register—the kind of sound that settled into the bones after years of hearing it, so constant it had stopped registering as noise and started registering as home.
Lights dimmed automatically as the ship aligned its trajectory, the corridors falling into that particular blue-grey hush that meant the navigation systems had taken over. Beyond the viewport, the starfield shifted, slow and indifferent, the way it always did before a drop.
Prep was already underway.
Shiloh stood at the Arsenal first, fingers moving with quiet certainty across the projection. Her Trinity frame waited in its cradle, pale and still, like it was listening for something only she could hear.
She didn’t rush—never did. Whatever urgency the mission demanded, she metabolized it long before it reached her hands, so that by the time she was standing here, swapping mods with practiced ease, she looked like a woman doing something closer to prayer than preparation.
“Corpus,” she said aloud, mostly for confirmation. Mostly for herself.
Elijah glanced over from the adjacent console, where Vauban’s loadout hovered in segmented layers, data scrolling faster than anyone else in the room could track. “Shield-heavy. Tech units. I’d boost Magnetic and Radiation.”
“Already did,” Shiloh said, sliding a magnetic mod into place without looking up.
He almost smiled at that. Almost.
Micah didn’t look up either, but there was the faintest exhale of approval from his corner of the Arsenal—the kind of quiet Elijah had learned, over the years, to read as agreement rather than distraction.
His Excalibur Umbra stood apart from the others, darker, heavier, less ornamental and more present, the way an old scar is more present on skin than the rest of it. Umbra’s sword rested magnet-locked at his side while Micah fine-tuned his melee configuration, thumb moving over the projection with the same unhurried focus he brought to everything he didn’t want examined too closely.
Michelle leaned against the rail nearby, arms crossed, reviewing her Mesa build with the kind of attention most people reserved for things that mattered. She flicked a glance toward Micah’s console anyway—she always did, whatever else she was doing.
“You’re leaning heavy on Slash again.”
“They bleed,” Micah replied evenly, like it was the only answer that had ever been necessary.
“So do we,” she said. Then, softer, in the register she used for almost no one else, “I’ll cover you.”
He nodded once. That was all it ever took. It had been all it ever took for longer than either of them had bothered to count.
Judah was already gone—at least visually. His Loki frame shimmered faintly at the edge of the Arsenal as he tested invisibility uptime, darting in and out of visibility like a bad habit he had no intention of breaking.
“Corpus security grids are tighter on Europa,” his voice chimed over comms from somewhere behind them, cheerful in the way that meant he was already three steps into a plan no one had asked him to make. “I’ll ghost ahead, disable alarms before anyone gets excited.”
Josiah snorted as he locked in his Rhino, the plating sealing around him with a resonant thrum that shook loose dust from the nearest console. “You always say that like they won’t notice the moment I walk in.”
“They’ll notice you,” Judah said cheerfully, entirely unbothered. “They won’t notice me.”
Gala rolled her shoulders as Ember flared briefly, heat rippling through the air before settling into something more contained. She adjusted her mods with sharper movements than strictly necessary, the way she did most things when she didn’t want anyone asking why—Heat weighted high, crowd control secondary, no patience today for anything that required waiting.
“Corpus or Grineer,” she muttered, mostly to the projection in front of her, “they burn either way.”
Josiah glanced at her, the kind of glance that wasn’t quite a question but wanted to be one. “You good?”
She met his eyes without flinching. “I’m always good.”
He believed her. That was the problem, and it was a problem old enough by now that neither of them bothered naming it anymore.
Britney’s Octavia chimed softly as she synced rhythm mods, the beat aligning with squad telemetry in a way that made the whole Arsenal feel, for a moment, like it was breathing on count. “I’ve got tempo control,” she said, already halfway to the next console. “If comms get messy, stick to the beat.”
David, silent as ever, checked the edge alignment on his Ash’s blades, Slash-focused, clean, economical in a way that mirrored the man wielding them. Britney bumped his shoulder lightly as she passed, the kind of contact she reserved for people who needed reminding they weren’t alone in a room even when they preferred to be.
“You’re tuned too tight,” she murmured.
He didn’t argue. He rarely did, with her. He just eased the setting down half a degree, and that was answer enough.
Mary and Patience finished last, as usual—not because they were slow, but because they were thorough, and thoroughness had never once been rewarded with speed in this family.
Harrow’s chains glimmered faintly as Mary adjusted survivability mods, murmuring numbers to herself the way other people murmured prayers, while Oberon’s configuration pulsed beside her, balanced between healing output and radiation damage with the kind of care that suggested Patience had run these numbers a hundred times before and still checked them a hundred and first.
Patience lifted her head, eyes soft but steady, and looked around the Arsenal like she was taking attendance. “Everyone ready?”
A chorus of confirmations followed, each one distinct enough to be a signature. Judah’s was a hum, half a laugh already loaded into it. Josiah’s was a grin you could hear before you saw it. Micah’s was silent—but his systems synced green across the board, and for him, that had always been the same thing as speaking.
Landing craft bays opened.
One by one, they stepped into their Lisets. Harnesses locked. Frames synchronized. The transition from flesh to Warframe was seamless—Void-light flaring, then settling into steel and power.
Atmospheric entry hit hard.
The planet below swelled into view—metallic Corpus spires cutting through ice and cloud. The Lisets screamed as they punched through atmosphere, then steadied, banking low over the landing zone.
“Thirty seconds,” Britney called.
The landing pads rushed up fast.
Hatches blew open.
The Tenno dropped.
They hit the platform in practiced silence—rolling, landing, rising in one fluid motion. Warframes aligned instinctively, backs covering backs, weapons already up.
Above them, the Lisets peeled away, engines flaring as they shot back into orbit, vanishing into cloud and starlight.
The hum of Corpus machinery filled the space they left behind.
Micah stepped forward first, blade igniting with a low, steady glow.
“Let’s move,” he said.
And together, they did.
EUROPA — VALAC OUTPOST
Faction: Corpus
Mission Type: Excavation
Environmental Hazard: Extreme Cold · Magnetic Interference
Enemy Units Detected: Tech Crewmen · Moa Variants · Nullifiers
Objective: Power and protect Corpus excavation drills. Retrieve Cryotic.
The HUD flickered to life as the Tenno advanced across the landing platform, translucent data panels sliding into place at the edges of their vision. Europa’s cold pressed in immediately—biting, invasive, a low hum beneath the armor as environmental systems compensated.
The ground trembled faintly beneath their feet.
Excavation site already active, the readouts confirmed.
A familiar voice chimed in, bright and a little too eager. “Operator—oh! Operators! Ordis is detecting multiple Corpus excavation drills already deployed in the area.”
Holographic markers bloomed across the terrain ahead, outlining angular Corpus structures half-buried in ice, coolant vents steaming into the frozen air.
“These machines are designed to siphon Cryotic from Europa’s crust. Ordis recommends…strongly recommends…that you take it instead.”
Josiah cracked his neck inside Rhino’s frame. “He always sounds offended about it.”
“Ordis is deeply offended,” Ordis corrected.
“Additionally—Corpus shield frequencies are fluctuating. Magnetic damage will be most effective. Please do not allow the drills to be destroyed.”
A beat.
“The drills are expensive.”
Judah’s Warframe shimmered faintly. “You heard the cephalon. Don’t scratch the equipment.”
“Try not to,” Gala muttered, Ember’s heat bleeding softly into the ice beneath her feet.
Shiloh raised a hand—not commanding, just grounding. The group slowed instinctively, tightening formation as they moved toward the first marked drill site. “Judah, eyes on perimeter,” she said calmly. “Michelle, overwatch when we hit the site. Josiah—frontline. Draw them off the drill.”
Everyone moved without comment.
That was the rhythm.
The first excavation unit came into view—a towering Corpus drill, its core glowing an icy blue as it bored into the crust. Power conduits pulsed rhythmically, drawing energy from nearby cells already slotted into place.
Enemies were inbound.
“Contact,” Michelle said, already climbing to higher ground. Mesa’s regulators clicked softly as she settled into position. “Multiple units, west approach. Nullifier bubble in the back.”
“On it,” Micah replied.
Umbra surged forward, blade igniting as the first wave crested the ridge—Crewmen scattering as Rhino charged straight through the center, absorbing fire with a laugh only Josiah could manage.
“Excellent progress!” Ordis chimed.
“Cryotic extraction has begun. Ordis will monitor power levels. Please insert additional power cells when required—or the drill will stop. And that would be… unfortunate.”
Judah’s voice slid into comms, light but focused. “Alarms are still asleep. Let’s keep it that way.”
The drill’s timer ticked down.
Snow whipped harder around them as Europa seemed to push back, the planet itself testing their resolve.
The drill’s core flared brighter as its first cycle deepened, a low, mechanical thrum vibrating up through the ice and into their frames. Power levels ticked down steadily—predictable, manageable.
Until the Corpus adjusted.
Michelle saw it first.
“Power carriers inbound,” she said, calm and clipped. “East side. Three—no, four units. Shielded.”
On cue, a cluster of Corpus Crewmen crested the far ridge, bulkier packs mounted to their backs, glowing cells secured in mag-lock harnesses. They moved faster than the others, guarded tightly, fire concentrated outward to keep them alive.
Shiloh didn’t hesitate. “Priority targets. Don’t let them reach the drill.”
Micah was already moving.
Umbra surged forward in a blur of steel and Void-light, blade cutting a clean arc through the snow as he closed the distance. A burst of magnetic energy detonated against the lead carrier’s shields—Michelle’s shot, perfectly timed. The shield collapsed with a sharp crack, and Micah finished the job in one fluid motion.
The power cell clattered free, skidding across the ice.
“Cell down,” Michelle confirmed. “Covering.”
Judah flickered into view beside the fallen unit just long enough to snatch the cell, then vanished again as gunfire stitched the space he’d occupied a heartbeat earlier. “I’ve got one. Bringing it in.”
Josiah barreled straight into the next group, Rhino’s plating glowing as he shoulder-checked a Tech clean off his feet. “You’re not paying enough attention to me,” he called cheerfully, drawing fire as intended.
That opened the lane.
Gala stepped into it.
Ember’s heat spiked, controlled but fierce, flames curling low and precise as she swept them across the remaining carriers. The snow hissed and steamed; shields buckled. One carrier stumbled, another dropped to a knee—
—and David was there, silent as a thought, Ash’s blades flashing once. The second power cell hit the ground intact.
“Two more,” Britney said, rhythm syncing across the squad as Octavia’s pulse steadied their movements. “Keep them staggered.”
Daniel blurred past in a streak of Volt-blue, static crackling as he cut off the last carrier before it could retreat. A quick discharge, shields fried by magnetic surge, and the unit went down hard.
The area fell quiet for half a second.
Snow drifted.
Corpus reinforcements were already recalculating.
Shiloh moved to the drill, kneeling smoothly as she slotted Judah’s recovered power cell into place. The machine responded immediately, hum deepening as the timer reset.
“Power restored!” Ordis announced, unmistakably pleased.
“Excellent prioritization, Operators. Ordis calculates a ninety-seven percent increase in efficiency when hostile power carriers are eliminated first.”
Josiah laughed. “See? We’re being graded.”
“Focus,” Elijah said, though there was no real edge to it. He was already marking new approach vectors on their HUDs. “More carriers will follow. Corpus won’t stop feeding the drill.”
“And we won’t stop taking it,” Michelle replied.
Micah repositioned near the drill without being asked, blade low, stance steady—close enough to defend, far enough to intercept. Michelle shifted her overwatch to mirror him, angles overlapping seamlessly.
Old habit. Unspoken agreement.
The next wave surged in—harder, smarter, shields layered thick.
Judah’s voice slid back into comms, light but intent. “Same plan?”
Shiloh rose to her feet, Trinity’s systems flaring softly as she boosted the squad’s resilience. “Same plan,” she said. “Cells first. Always.”
The Tenno braced as the Corpus advanced again, and once more, they moved as one. Though, the third wave didn’t feel like the others.
Micah felt it before Ordis even said anything—a change in the air that had nothing to do with temperature. The wind off the ridge shifted register, and the magnetic hum running under the ice thickened into something with weight to it, pressing against his frame’s systems the way deep water pressed against lungs.
“Operators—Ordis is detecting a magnetic field spike. Localized. Significant.”
“How significant?” Elijah asked, already pulling up readouts.
“Significant enough that Ordis recommends you finish quickly.”
The ground didn’t shake so much as settle, ice groaning somewhere beneath the drill site in a long, low note that Micah felt through his boots more than heard. He didn’t like it. Umbra didn’t like it either—the sword’s edge dimmed for half a breath, energy guttering the way it had inside the Nullifier’s bubble, before steadying again. A warning, not a failure. Not yet.
“Ability suppression risk,” Michelle said, from her perch above the site. Her voice hadn’t changed, but he’d learned a long time ago that her voice not changing was its own kind of alarm. “If that field spikes again while we’re mid-fight—”
“We finish the extraction before it does,” Shiloh said. Calm, but faster now, already redirecting flow toward the second drill. “Cryotic quota’s at eighty percent. We push.”
Micah didn’t need telling twice. He fell back into position at the drill’s flank, blade low, watching the tree line where the last wave had come from and knowing, with the particular certainty that came from doing this exact thing a hundred times before, that whatever came next would come from somewhere he wasn’t yet looking.
It came from above.
A Bursa dropped through the storm without warning, its heavy frame crashing down at the edge of the excavation site hard enough to crater the ice, and the moment its shields flared online, the whole magnetic field lurched—not a spike this time but a wall, an entire register of the world going hollow and cold and wrong in a way it hadn’t been in years.
Umbra’s blade went dark in his hand.
Not dim. Dark. The Void-light guttered out entirely and didn’t come back, and for one long, stretched-thin second Micah was just a man standing in armor on an alien moon, holding a sword with nothing behind it but his own arm.
He didn’t stop moving. He’d learned, a long time ago, that stopping was the only unforgivable thing.
From the ridge, Michelle watched the moment his light died and her chest did something complicated and fast that she didn’t have time to examine.
Mesa’s own systems flickered—not out, not yet, but thin, like a signal losing strength. She adjusted before she’d finished processing why, dropping her stance lower, bracing for the recoil she’d need to manage without the frame’s usual assist behind it.
“Bursa. Big one. It’s suppressing the field—everyone’s abilities are going to be unreliable until it’s down,” she said, already tracking the machine’s shield generator through her scope. “Micah, fall back from the flank.”
He didn’t.
Of course he didn’t.
She’d known him long enough to understand that telling Micah to protect himself was roughly as effective as telling ice not to be cold; it simply wasn’t a language he spoke fluently, not when there was still something between him and the people he’d decided were his to keep standing.
He held the flank anyway, blade dark and useless for anything but the oldest kind of violence, and put himself between the Bursa and the drill like it was the only decision that had ever made sense to him.
She hated how unsurprised she was.
She fired anyway—no magnetic burst behind it now, just old aim and older instinct, round after round chipping at the Bursa’s shield the way water chipped at stone, slow and certain and unglamorous. It wasn’t enough on its own. It bought time, though, and time was the only currency that mattered right now.
“Cryotic at ninety-two,” Ordis reported, entirely too calm for the circumstances. “Ninety-five. Extraction window opening in forty seconds.”
“We’re not going to make forty seconds at this rate,” Elijah said, voice tight in a way it rarely got. His own abilities were guttering too, Bastille flickering weakly at the edges instead of holding, and she could hear the calculation running under his words—recalibrating, always recalibrating, even when the numbers had stopped cooperating.
“Then we make it the old way,” Josiah said, and drove Rhino straight into the Bursa’s side hard enough that the machine staggered, servos shrieking against the impact.
It wasn’t subtle. It bought three seconds. Micah used them.
Three seconds was enough, when it had to be.
He closed the last of the distance while the Bursa was still recovering its footing, and without Umbra’s light to carry the blade, the strike that finished the shield generator was just muscle and momentum and the particular focus that came from having exactly one thing left to do and no illusions left about how to do it.
Steel met steel. The generator sparked, spat, and died, and the magnetic field lurched again—releasing this time, not tightening—as the Bursa’s systems cascaded into shutdown around him.
Umbra’s light came back like a held breath finally let go.
“Field’s clearing,” Michelle said, and he could hear something under the words he didn’t have time to name yet. “Ordis, talk to me.”
“Cryotic quota met!” Ordis announced, delighted, as though the last ninety seconds hadn’t happened at all. “Extraction available. Ordis strongly recommends you take it before the field decides to be difficult again.”
“Agreed,” Shiloh said, already moving. “Everyone to the LZ. Now.”
They moved as a unit down the slope, boots skidding on refrozen ice, the drill’s hum fading behind them into the general roar of the storm. Micah fell into the rear position without being asked—last one out, same as always—and it wasn’t until he heard footsteps matching his pace exactly, rather than pulling ahead toward the Liset with the others, that he registered Michelle had dropped back to walk beside him instead of ahead.
“You didn’t fall back,” she said. Not an accusation. Just a fact, laid down between them like she was setting something on a table for him to look at.
“Wasn’t going to leave the flank open.”
“Your light was out, Micah.”
“I noticed.”
She didn’t say anything to that. She didn’t need to; he felt the look anyway, even through the storm and the visor and the several feet of Europa’s cold sitting between them, and it did something to the back of his neck that he filed away, the way he filed away most things about her, to be examined later and never actually examined at all.
She let it go, because pushing wouldn’t change the outcome and she’d rather have him alive and infuriating than right and reckless.
The Liset’s ramp was already lowering as they crested the last ridge, engine wash kicking up loose snow in a wide, stinging circle.
She climbed aboard first, out of habit more than protocol, and turned in time to watch him come up last—same as always, boots heavy with ice, blade dark for one more second before Umbra’s systems finished resetting and the glow crept back along the edge like something waking up.
He caught her watching. He usually did, eventually.
“Field’s clear,” he said, like an explanation. Like it needed one.
“I know,” she said. “I was covering you.”
“I know,” he said back, and something in the way he said it—flat, certain, entirely too calm for a man who’d just fought a Bursa with a sword that didn’t work—told her he meant it as more than acknowledgment. It was the closest thing to thank you he ever managed, and she’d stopped waiting for the actual word a long time ago.
The ramp sealed. The Liset lifted off, Europa’s ice spires shrinking beneath them into white and grey and distance, and Michelle settled into the seat across from him without needing to think about it, the way she always did, the way everyone on this crew had simply stopped commenting on.
Micah didn’t look at her again. He didn’t have to.
She was still covering him.
She always would be.
The Orbiter’s hum felt different after a mission like that—lower, somehow, like the ship itself was exhaling. Lights had shifted back to their standard cycle, warm instead of the clipped operational white of the drop, and the corridors filled slowly with the particular noise of people coming down from adrenaline: boots against metal, someone laughing too loud in the mess, the soft mechanical sigh of frames being racked back into their cradles one by one.
Michelle stripped out of Mesa’s systems in the transference chamber, the frame settling into its cradle behind her with the low chime that meant it had registered no damage worth logging.
She didn’t linger there. She rarely did.
Instead she found herself drifting, the way she always did after a mission that had gone sideways for even a few seconds, toward the observation deck—and toward the fact that Micah wasn’t in the mess with the others, wasn’t in his quarters yet either, because she’d already checked without quite admitting to herself that she was checking.
He was where she expected him to be. He usually was.
The deck was quiet at this hour, Europa long since shrunk to a pale smear against the dark, and Micah stood at the viewport with his arms crossed, still in the under-layer he wore beneath Umbra’s plating, sleeves pushed up like he’d meant to do something with his hands and then forgotten what.
He didn’t turn when the door slid open. He didn’t need to. She’d learned, over the years, that he always knew when it was her—something in the weight of her steps, or the fact that she was the only person on this crew who didn’t bother announcing herself.
“You’re not eating,” she said, coming to stand beside him rather than in front of him, because facing him directly tended to make him retreat somewhere she couldn’t follow.
“I will.”
“You said that after the last one too.”
He didn’t answer that, which was its own kind of answer. Below them, the moon turned slow and silent, ice fields catching what little light reached this far out, and for a while neither of them said anything at all—the kind of silence that had stopped being uncomfortable between them so long ago that she couldn’t remember when it had shifted, only that it had.
“Your shield dropped for three seconds back there,” he said eventually, not looking at her. “Before Elijah pulled the Bastille wide.”
“I noticed.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“Neither did you. About your sword.” She glanced sideways at him, at the line of his jaw, the way he was holding himself very still in the particular manner he adopted when he was working hard not to be examined. “We’re both bad at this.”
That got something out of him—not quite a laugh, but the ghost of one, air moving differently through his chest. “At what?”
“Admitting when it was close.”
He was quiet long enough that she thought he might let it go the way he let most things go, folding it into the same drawer where he kept everything he didn’t want to look at directly. But he didn’t, not this time. His jaw worked once, like he was testing the shape of a sentence before he let it out.
“I don’t like it when your shield drops.”
It wasn’t much.
It wouldn’t have sounded like much to anyone else on this crew—Josiah would’ve missed it entirely, Judah would’ve turned it into a joke before it finished landing.
But she’d spent years learning the specific grammar of Micah Nelson, the way his most honest sentences came out sounding like observations rather than confessions, like he could only afford to mean things if he phrased them as fact.
I don’t like it when your shield drops was, in that grammar, roughly equivalent to someone else saying I was afraid.
“I know,” she said, quiet, and didn’t push further, because pushing had never once gotten her anywhere with him faster than patience had.
He exhaled, slow, shoulders dropping half an inch in a way she doubted he noticed himself doing. “Ordis is already logging the Bursa encounter as a partial system failure. He wants to review my loadout.”
“Let him.”
“I don’t need a different loadout.”
“No,” she agreed. “You need to stop standing in fields that turn your sword off.”
That did get a laugh out of him—short, real, more breath than sound, but real. He looked at her then, properly, for the first time since she’d walked in, and whatever was in his face lasted only a second before he tucked it back behind the same careful stillness he wore for everyone else. Everyone but her, and even then only for a second at a time.
“Noted,” he said.
Down the corridor, Judah’s voice rose in the mess, saying something that made Josiah bark out a laugh loud enough to carry through two bulkheads, and the sound of the rest of the family being exactly as loud and exactly as fine as always drifted toward them like proof that the ship, the crew, the whole strange constellation of them, was still intact.
Michelle didn’t move to join them yet. Neither did Micah. They stood at the viewport a while longer, shoulder to shoulder, watching Europa fall further behind, saying nothing else that needed saying, because they’d already said the only two things that had mattered.