48Doan Tana has a secret. That, in itself, makes her rather unusual. After all, Grineer aren't exactly known for their subtle and conniving ways. Doan Tana, however, is – oh, how to put it diplomatically? – a touch smarter than the average copy-of-a-copy soup-for-brains Grineer. Obviously, her intelligence is not, in itself, a secret. After all, if Tyl Regor could flaunt those tubemen of his, Doan Tana can figure out a better strategy than, "shoot there," once in a while without raising suspicion.
Where were we? Oh, right, the secret.
It all started on a day like any other. A squad of grineer had been assigned to clear one of their ships of Infested. Not a very fair fight, all told, since the ship had originally been populated by several hundred grineer, which most of them were pretty sure was more than a squad.
In ascending order of intelligence, the first few grineer were blissfully unaware of any problems, the larger second group was nervous ranging into terrified, and exactly two grineere were feeling knowledgeably confident. This was because one of those two had paid attention to the briefing (which consisted of a lengthy bout of mostly-articulate shouting), while the other had given said briefing. At least, we assume he was confident. Most people pay attention to their own briefings, even if they could handily switch the contents of their skull with the contents of their gun magazines and be none worse off.
- Sir, if you would like a less biased accounting of events, perhaps you would prefer to scribe the history yourself. -
- As I expected. -
For those paying attention, it is a safe guess that Doan Tana was the other of these two.
As a matter of fact, she was the tall grineer in white armour standing a little away from the rest of her dozen squadmates. It is important that there were a dozen and that she was standing alone, because she was the only own in the group willing to count that high without prompting, and her squad didn't much like that kind of curiosity. So she stood alone, and even her squad leader, who one would think might appreciate being listened to, ignored her.
Typical of grineer, not to properly appreciate those who should stand out among them rather than stand aside. Not that Doan struck much of an impressive figure. Whether she was uglier than others of her ilk is for others to judge, but she was a clone, and therefore of average height for her stock, approximately two and a third meters after her cybernetics, with long spindly limbs and a round head, all cooped up in that dreadfully tasteless armour they wear.
- Yes, sir, less fashion commentary. But really, the grineer are so…-
- Yes, yes. Do you want this story recorded or not? -
- Thank you. -
Doan's defects – for those are always the most intriguing parts of a grineer – included a bad hip that made it difficult for her to sit properly, poor eyesight that seldom interfered with her role as a heavy machine gunner, and a host of other small issues which were handily dealt with by grineer engineering and therefore hardly worth mentioning. Of course, Doan Tana's intellect can hardly be considered a defect, though the queens surely would consider her curiosity to be one.
After all, it is difficult to discover anything worth keeping secret without a hint of curiosity.
I've digressed again, haven't I?
Let's see… ship, infested, Doan, ah, yes! The entrance! Very exciting, I'm sure.
You see, the squad of Grineer were all waiting. Better for them, since a squad of grineer on an infested ship has about the chances of the third brown Chesa kubrow in a litter. So, some grineer with both money and sense decided to call in a Tenno to help with the job.
Yes, a Tenno. Naturally, the commander was a bit nervous. After all, perhaps one in a hundred thousand grineer missions even asked for Tenno support. Far more likely for a grineer mission to come to a gruesome end by Tenno intervetion. At that point in history, only a few million grineer had been killed by Tenno, but some of the cleverer ones had started to notice the pattern.
Tenno were dangerous. It was all over the yelling channel.
Such was the reason Doan had such a good grip on her gorgon machine gun and her back to a wall. Better yet, there was nothing on the other side of the wall but space, so she was definitely facing the right way to see the Tenno as soon as it saw her. She felt that would help.
In Doan's defense, she'd never met a Tenno before.
After just long enough for most of the squad to get bored, the Tenno dropped out of thin air, in a locked room, in the middle of a grineer squad, on an infested ship.
A minor fuss was mad. Some yelling, a few gunshots, a lot more yelling, a nearly literal disarming that at least resulted in a very sore shoulder, and then what amounted to a conversation between the Tenno and the squad commander. Considering the Tenno didn't speak and the commander couldn't yell more than a few words without swearing, it cannot be said to be one of the diplomatic successes of the war. Nevertheless, the matter was cleared up in due course and the squad started to move out.
The first thing that happened was that the Tenno disappeared again, prompting some grumbling from the grineer that they'd been abandoned already.
Typical grineer mindset, that a Tenno would act as cowardly as they would.
Dear young Doan, however, had an inkling that the Tenno hadn't disappeared. In spite of her eyesight, she noticed that the first room her squad entered included more than a few infested that seemingly split in two of their own accord, neat as you please. Not normal behaviour for any living being, I assure you. Therefore, she concluded… what were her words? Not sightable? Un-seeable?
- Invisible? Are you sure she knows a word like that? -
Invisible. Hm. Told you Doan was smart.
Clearing out the ship was a boring thing, because entire rooms seemed to be cleansed of infested before they arrived, and any time there were enough to make for a good fight, half of them seemed to fall in pieces before the grineer could shoot them. It led ot a bit of a frustrated mood for the grineer, who had been promised quite a lot of shooting this mission. Grineer were usually that way, looking for some way to relieve their perpetual crankiness.
Doan, however, was finding herself amused by the trick of guessing where the invisible Tenno was or where it was going to strike next. Sometimes she'd see a string of infested blood fly across the room, or even catch a half-imagined glint behind an ancient a second before it stopped getting any more ancient. Maybe she spotted a pair of footprints in the infested stuff on the floor or saw a door open when there was nothing there.
This turned out to be a very useful skill, because while a Tenno is a silent and deadly killer – sometimes – Grineer are rarely so. As a matter of fact, they are rather famous for their, "combat formation bravo," which amounts to precisely as complex a thought process as, "enemy, everyone shoot!" Not a healthy prospect for a Tenno standing in the way, I can assure you. Doan didn't really know this, but she didn't want to annoy her squad's new friend, so she found herself constantly pointing out enemies to shoot or knocking rifles and men aside so they wouldn't shoot him.
Like any reasonably intelligent grineer, Doan Tana didn't like her odds clearing out an infested ship with nothing but a few lancers, her heavy gun, and her commander.
All of this would have been fine. No reason for any secrets, really. Except that the Tenno must have noticed, because he returned the favour.
- What do you mean, interesting? -
- Oh, yes, much clearer. Thank you. -
-Yes, that was sarcasm! -
It was after the grineer and Tenno had killed their way across more than half the ship that things suddenly went very wrong. The Tenno was nowhere to be seen – yes, haha, very punny – and the infested were cleared out in the room the squad was in. Together, they formed up near the next door, listening to the sounds of infested on the other side with varying degrees of anticipation.
Doan Tana shouldered her way to the front and stepped through the door first. She had the most armour and was the biggest, but she didn't like being in front much. It meant other people were watching her. Today, though, she got to be the first to guess where the Tenno was, and that was the most fun she'd had in her life.
Suffice to say, grineer lifestyles are not riveting entertainment.
When the door opened, Doan did not see the Tenno, or any signs of it. What she did see was a room filled with what the layman might call WAY TOO MANY infested.
Doan, being a reasonable sort of individual, pulled the trigger on her gorgon rifle and yelled, "FIRE!"
In spite of her quick reaction and the surprising speed with which her squad responded, it was seconds before both lancers on either side of Doan were dead and replaced with infested chargers, while Doan herself was shin-deep in infested muck and reduced to using her rifle to batter away the nearest infested. Obviously, this had the unfortunate side effect of reducing her life expectancy considerably.
Then there was a flicker on the opposite side of the room, and everything shifted. Doan found herself standing behind the swarm of infested, watching her squad be torn apart alongside the Tenno, who seemed to be standing right where she'd been a moment before.
At this point, Doan Tana was very lucky to be Doan Tana, because somebody less intelligent might have taken longer to realize where she'd ended up, and somebody more intelligent might have wasted time wondering how she ended up there. As it happens, Doan Tana inhabits that special place on the smarts spectrum that lets her react promptly, if primitively, to unexpected situations without using up too much valuable brain power worrying how the situation arose. Therefore, Doan wasted no time doing as grineer do, albeit with characteristically greater grace and alacrity. She reloaded her rifle, pointed it at the enemy, and opened fire.
Really, Doan should have gotten a medal for her execution of combat formation bravo that day. Sadly, Grineer don't offer medals, so her commander ended up telling her something along the lines of, "good job, onto the next one, try not to die on this one, either," except with more growling and terrible enunciation, as one might expect of a man whose jaw formed into a shape somewhat resembling a squeezed sponge.
And Doan would have been happy with that. Well, not happy. Satisfied. Happiness wasn't really something Grineer were very good at. Cranky all the time, actually.
She would have been satisifed, if not for the body lying amid the pile of Infested grossness.
The Tenno hadn't been quite as lucky as she had.
The rest of her squad went on ahead, and Doan's commander tried to make her come with them, but she was a female and therefore tougher than him, so she stayed and he grumbled and walked away.
It turned out that it was a he, with horns on his head and dull grey armour-cloth covering most of its body. He just lay there, covered in gross infested goo and claw gouges.. There was nothing majestic about him now, just a sense that something amazing had been lost.
And it was Doan's fault.
The feeling that welled up in Doan's chest wasn't the secret she kept, because she didn't know what it was and therefore didn't really have a secret to tell. Whatever it was, it made her eyes itch. She could tell because they watered a lot. Itching wasn't an unusual thing, for a Grineer. Same for aches and pointy ouchies and other various crankiness-inducing things. This was different, though.
Doan pulled the Tenno from the muck and sat him against the wall. Then she went back and got his weapons. A little red sword – well, little for her – and a simple rifle. She stumbled across a bolto that was too colourful to be Grineer, so she brought that, too, and put the sword in one hand, the bolto in the other, and the rifle across his lap. Then she stood back and surveyed the room.
It was its own little garden of chaos. Not that Doan knew what a garden was, but if this narrative were limited to a grineer vocabulary, even Miss Tana's, we would quickly run out of ways to put the words together.
It was what she'd have liked. Back against a wall, weapon in hand, lots of gross dead things all around, because she'd killed them. Not face down in muck in the middle of a lot of other dead things. That was no good.
Then Doan moved up to one of the fleshy walls and leaned against it. She'd have sat, but one of her legs had a thing with its fleshy bits and it didn't bend very well. It hurt if she sat on it, too.
What happened next, that became her secret. She wouldn't tell anybody about it.
Doan's eyes weren't the best. Ask anybody and they'd say that a Heavy Gunner didn't need good eyes. Still, the flash of light was bright, bright like an explosion. Doan guessed it actually was an explosion, kind of. Except the thing in the middle was fine and everything else was broken and burned.
There was the Tenno, collecting its weapons. It straightened up and looked at Doan. Doan looked at it. At him. The way the Tenno stood, holding his weapons in his casually threatening way, made Doan think that she'd seen something she shouldn't have.
Rather than kill her on the spot, however – after all, that would have wasted the effort he'd put in earlier – the Tenno lifted one finger to his faceplate.
Doan copied the gesture, putting one finger to her lips in a shushing motion.
"Secret," she said.
