Ten Zero

The following day in the dugout is rough. The pitch black space that we're confined to makes each moment feel like it drags on and on and on. As well, we can't really do anything to keep ourselves occupied since we can't see anything. And the one or two times I try to speak up to Ko-lee, maybe get some sort of dialogue going between us (if only for both our sanity), she shuts it down quick with a one to two word answer. Eventually, I just stop making the attempt, and lay back down onto the mattress beneath me, my eyes desperately trying to form information out of the nothing. "This is exactly par for the course," I think, not having anything else to do. "Of course the Grineer were going to wipe out the damn settlement. We tried to play it safe, and all we ended up doing is getting traumatized. Maybe we really should've just... tried to duo the entire platoon." The self recriminations aren't helpful, but I can't help but think 'what if, what if, what if'.

"Could we have fought them? We didn't even really try. And that one soldier we bodied absolutely bit the curb. Not that-", my mind stutters at the thought of having ended the man's life. "It's weird how little I'm bothered by that. Why don't I care more?" I know that logically, the adrenaline of the situation had pushed away my immediate feelings on the situation, but now I was just sitting in the dark, with nothing to do but examine my mind. And no matter how much I seemed to poke and prod I just... didn't really care. "He was a threat, he was going to kill us, so I killed him. Should I feel bad about that?" I hate the fact that there's no one for me to bounce idea's off of; my wife is incredibly intelligent and would've been a perfect sounding board for this sort of ethical dilemma. But instead all I had was someone I could barely communicate with on a good day, and probably wasn't interested in diving into the shades of morality I was currently trying to differentiate between.

The problem is, at the core of myself, I'm a talker. I want to talk about a situation; determine a course of action and, if feasible, act on said plan as soon as possible. So sitting in the dark doing nothing felt like an inefficient use of our time. I wanted to talk to Ko-lee; I wanted her to be less miserable about the situation, as insane as that might be. "Time is what heals all wounds. Eventually she'll be ready to talk, but it's hardly even been 48 hours. Just, chill the fuck out," I think to myself, doing my utmost to avoid futilely attempting to start another conversation. I end up rolling over on the barely-softer-than-ground mattress, and close my eyes, trying in vain to just shut my brain off until it's time for us to leave.

Ko-lee and I have been trekking our way towards Cetus for 5 days now. After that first 24 hours spent in the dugout, Ko-lee was relatively confident that the Grineer wouldn't be chasing us, as we weren't considered high priority targets. And so, our day-to-day had become a bit more routine. We would leave a dugout with a small amount of food; just enough to keep us going, but not enough to be a major detriment during the hike. Then, we'd start moving, and barring breaks for food and water and the restroom, we never stopped. We would head towards the next closest dugout, meaning that our actual route wasn't straight towards Cetus, but most of the cache's were built with travelers in mind, so there were plenty in the direction we were headed. Plenty is, of course, a relative term. The 16 hours of hiking a day wasn't just because we had nothing better to do, but because we actually needed to push pretty hard to make sure we'd be able to get to the next cache in time. The first day after hiding, we actually weren't able to make it because I was lagging behind a bit, and we ended up having to forge our way through the forest during the night.

Ko-lee was understandably frustrated about that. Ko-lee's been understandably frustrated this entire trip, actually, as well as sad, and occasionally furious (although not quite as furious since that instance with the soldier). I attribute that half to the fact that she wants to be amicable, and half to the fact that I've done my best to avoid ticking her off. We'd been off and on chatting during the trip, and most of the dialog between us has literally just been me practicing Ostron and Origin, a fact that I've been immensely grateful for. More often than not, she seemed to be lost in thought, but I was glad for any opportunity to try to distract her from her misery, plus I really wanted to be able to hold some level of conversation once we actually reached Cetus. At the rate I was learning, I felt confident I'd be able to hold rudimentary conversations with strangers without needing to resort to interpretive dance.

In any case, we were in another of of the impromptu learning sessions; I was rambling on about nothing in particular, while Ko-lee was occasionally jumping in to correct my pronunciation, or to provide a word that I was missing. The day was late, and so I was exhausted; my tongue feeling a bit looser as a result of the constant physical exertion. "...get to Cetus, we will be okay. We can talk to Konzu, and once we talk to Konzu, he will talk to conclave, and conclave will send out force!" I say, not particularly listening to the words. It was mostly flow of thought; words just spilling out of my mouth and into the air, as we keep our eyes peeled for various dangerous wildlife within the forest. "I wonder who Konzu talk to. Maybe he send Tenno? That would-" but my words are cut off by an interjection from Ko-lee. "No," she said, and I take a moment to try to figure out if she is telling me that I'm forming the word wrong, or if she's actually responding to the content of the sentence. "No?" I ask, looking over to Ko-lee on my left.

Ko-lee, for her part, doesn't make eye contact, instead continuing to look resolutely forward. "No Tenno," she says. I give her a moment to elaborate, but nearly 30 seconds go by, with only the sound of bird call to fill the space between us. "Why not Tenno? They kill really good, they kill Grineer with no problem," I state, confident of my assessment from my nearly 2 thousand hours of gameplay. "Can. They CAN kill really good. But they won't," she says, quickly responding to my statement of the Tenno's combat prowess. "Why they won't?" I ask, genuinely confused. This seemed like the exact sort of mission I'd encounter in-game; literally an exterminate mission, or possibly an assassination mission on Colonel Jar or something. I didn't see any reason as to why they would choose 'not' to engage in a little bit of vengeance, assuming that they were paid. "Why won't they?" Ko-lee repeats my phrase back at me, the grammar corrected. "Ecsueba Konzu won't ask them to."

The surety of the statement makes me stop, and there's a moment before Ko-lee notices that I'm no longer by her side. She looks at me for a moment, and I can see all of the pain and stress held in the lines on her face. I'm at a loss for words for a moment, doing my best to wrack my mind on why Ko-lee is so confident that he'd just let an entire Ostron colony be vaporized without any recourse. "Konzu will ask the Tenno," I say, intending to phrase it as a question, but faltering and forming what sounds like an unsure statement. Ko-lees face darkens, and she takes a few steps between us, closing the distance. "No. Konzu will not," she said, her voice dangerously low. I knew I was treading on thin ice, but I couldn't tell what ice was and wasn't safe without putting my weight on it, so I just kept trucking forward, bracing for the inevitable fallout. "Why Konzu won't ask?"

"Because he's a ???!" she says, her voice echoing out amongst the treetops and off into the forest. I can't tell what her last word is, so I just repeat it back to her, and she enunciates the word, slowly, mockingly. "Cow. ward. Like scared, afraid. He is a coward. The conclave era cowards. My dad is a coward!" Ko-lee shouts, each word punctuated by a step towards me. She was so close that I was backpedaling so that she wasn't literally pushing me over, but it was clear that she wanted some sort of physical confrontation, because she begins poking me in the chest as if to physically drive home her point. "YOU ARE A COWARD. My Dad is-" her explosive tirade is briefly halted by a stumble and crack in the voice, but picks up again with, "You killed my father. YOU killed Sanza."

Like previously mentioned, I'm more fight than flight, so without thinking I immediately snap back, "you stupid? How I killed Sanza?" I know the second the words are out of my mouth that it's the wrong energy to bring; I'm escalating rather than deescalating. But the insinuation that I had a hand in her father's death seriously pisses me off. "I liked Sanza! I wanted to save him! I went along with the plan to save him, right up until we encountered over a 100 heavily armored soldiers, a gunship, and a tank! Then, I very LOGICALLY made the choice not to engage, because it 'would have killed us'." I think to myself, my mind forming the words to the argument before she's even had a chance to respond. Ko-lee, for her part, matches me, and snaps back "WE COULD AVHE SAVED HIM. We didn't eevn try! All I had to do was run in and grab him! He was 25 fete away! We didn't try! We didn't try, Antimony. We didn't try..." Ko-lee says, her voice trailing off. Tears are welling in her eyes, and I can tell that she is fighting the emotion that her body has been dealing with for nearly a week, doing everything she can to avoid falling apart in front of me.

"Ko-lee..." I start, not knowing what was going to come out of my mouth. "you know it not worked. It was numbers game. There so many of them, and only two us. It is not fault that Grineer attacked. You know that, right? Nothing you could do, no words... no action to stop them." I do my best to pick my words carefully, trying to impress upon her the sincerity of my words through the fractured language I was wielding. "It was not you fault." Tears are streaming down her face, but every one of Ko-lee's muscles is marble; a statue with a water feature. I take a moment, before repeating it to her again. "It. was not. you. fault. I was there, I know. It was not." I watch her, and the only thing I can see is the subtlest of head shakes from Ko-lee; shakes so small I wasn't sure if it was from her trying to hold in a sob, or from rejection of my words. "Antimony... if I didn't rescue you, then I would be wiht my father right now."

I feel sick to my stomach. With trepidation, I open my mouth to ask for clarification I'm not entirely sure I want. "Dead or alive?"

"Does it really matter?" she says, the ghost of a self deprecating grin on her lips.

I don't know how to respond. Eventually, she turns away from me, and continues blazing a path forward. I move to catch up with her, but she's pushing faster than she has this entire time, as though she's trying to outrun me, or the conversation, or her feelings. After nearly face planting due to a unseen tree root, I stop trying to catch up, and focus more on keeping her within eyesight, and once she's put nearly 100 yards between us, she slows to a more manageable pace. It's pretty clear that she just wants some space between us, so rather than pushing it, I just think about her words, pulling apart the conversation in my head, trying to hear everything that wasn't said. "I can sort of understand calling Sanza a coward, he didn't want to involve the Tenno because he didn't want to escalate. And I can kind of see why she called me a coward, although again, I'm not confident stupidity equals bravery. We absolutely, 100%, without a doubt would have died had we just ran in. But what I don't get is why she called Konzu and the conclave cowards. They work with the Tenno to fight the Grineer all the time... in the game. Is it different here maybe? Although, I swear I remember Sanza saying something about him and Konzu having different thoughts on working with the Tenno," I think, doing my best to find answers while also avoiding any unpleasant forest falls.

I notice that the tree line is thinning, and part of me wonders if our next hideaway is going to be outside of the forest. Ultimately it doesn't change much; it would still be a pitch black hole in the ground no matter what was outside of it, but I liked the cover that the forest gave as a secondary level of concealment from the few Grineer flyovers we had seen from a distance. But instead of making her way entirely out of the forest, Ko-lee stops just on the edge of the thinning woods, allowing me to finally catch back up. However, the second I'm within range of talking to Ko-lee without needing to raise my voice, she immediately ducks into the dugout to begin prepping ourselves for the night. The process doesn't take long, as it's mostly just clearing out old food, and dusting off the mats that we were going to end up sleeping on; busy work that definitely didn't need to be done right that instant. It's pretty clear that she's using it more as an opportunity to look busy and avoid interaction.

Still, I had questions I needed (or at least wanted) answered, so as Ko-lee came out of the dugout, I spoke her name softly, as to not startle her. "Ko-lee, I need know. Why Konzu and conclave cowards?" Ko-lee just sighed, and I could tell from the way her shoulders drooped that she was hoping that the conversation was done. Still, she was willing to entertain the question, so she spoke up in response. "Konzu, and the conclave as a whole are... they don't ocsuf on vengeance. They aren't ustj the leaders of Cetus, but of the Ostron people as a whole. The dosnicies they make are..." she trails off, and I do my best to practice patience while she forms the next portion of her explanation. "Did you know htat Sharip is the olde- was. Was the oldest Ostron settlement?" I can feel the whiplash, not only from the abrupt change in subject, but also because Sharip didn't appear to be that old. "It was definitely oldish, but the oldest? That seems... unlikely, from what I could tell of the construction and stuff. Unless I'm drastically confused as far as timeline stuff goes," I think, but I do my best to hold my tongue until she finishes.

"Sharip was the oldest settlement. But they weren't the first. Not by a olng shot. Do you know what happened to the first settlement?" I just shake my head, throwing out a random guess. "First settlement is Cetus now?" I ask, even though I'm confident this isn't going to be a history lesson on Ostron settlement name changes. "The Grineer burned it down. I'll give you three sugsese on what happened to the second settlement." I know immediately, and don't bother answering the posed hypothetical. "Not every failed settlement has eebn destroyed by the Grineer. But the longer they stick around, the higher the echacn grows that those pobber faced sasbdtar will be the settlements downfall. And what do you think has eneb the conclave's rnesesop to this?" I shrug, still not entirely sure why the answer wouldn't be "immediate, overwhelming retaliation using void magic child soldiers piloting war machines". "Mostly, nothing. Sometimes, if it's dreaalfofb, or if the settlement was close enough, they might hire some Tenno to swing back, but generally, they don't do anything. Not anymore than they already do. They're already fighting the Grineer on a few fronts. They can't aoffdr to avenge corpses," she says, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

I can feel the light shining on my mind from the clarification of her words. "Right, it's... a whole planet. The Grineer are clones of clones, and they get spit out like watermelon seeds. Even if one Tenno can kill like 1000 in an hour, what sort of dent are they making, really? It's an issue of scale. I'm still stuck thinking about the video game, but this is real life now. How many kids could there have been on the Zaramain, feasibly? And spread out amongst an entire solar system?" I think, feeling the shift in perception. "Then... what we doing? To go in Cetus?" I ask, confused. I was operating under the idea that the whole point was to push back against the Grineer with the Tenno, using the Cetus conclave's resources. If we weren't doing that...

"We'll let Konzu know, for the records, and then... be bums, I ugsse. Eat the floor. That's what we call the flesh of the Unum they feel isn't up to standard for bgnie sold. It's generally used to feed peictva animals and such, but we could probably keep ourselves alive with it," she says. "Wait, really?" I ask, not entirely sure if she's being sarcastic. "Is it that bad? We can't do better anything?" Anxiety begins to tickle the back of mind; the thought of trying to pull myself up by the bootstraps in the Warframe universe seemed exponentially harder than doing it back home, and it was already supposed to be a metaphor for impossibility. "No, no," she says, "it's not that bad. I've heard prswhesi of some places in the system that are... much worse." Her eyes turn to the sky, as though she can focus the hundreds of billions of miles needed to spot the places referenced. "She's probably thinking of Fortuna. Or I am, anyways," I think, my eyes following hers into the sky. We sit there for a moment, looking at the various stars, until she half mumbles under her breath, "we should turn in for the night."

Instead, I realize I have an opportunity to get Ko-lee to open up a bit more. Even though the topics we were conversing about were a bit dark, it was genuinely more back and forth than we had had in the entire few days prior. "Hold on!" I exclaim, ducking my head into the dugout. I keep the top open, and my eyes quickly adjust to the shadowed pit. I grab what little food is remaining, as well as one of the mats, and quickly head back out into the nighttime, my arms full of supplies. Ko-lee just looks at me, eyebrows furrowed as she tries to piece together my plan from what little information she has. Once I reach the top of the dugout, I throw the mat down onto the dirt; a small cloud of dust spawning from the drier ground near the edge of the forest. "It's uh..." I start to say, but realize I don't know the word for picnic.

"Word for sit and eat? Outside?" I ask, but Ko-lee just shakes her head, seemingly unable to provide me a word for the action. "No word?" I say, and she just nods. "Oh, okay. In my language, word is 'picnic'." "Pik... nik?" she asks, her mouth chewing on the syllables of the word. "Yea, picnic. It when go outside and eat food, instead of eating inside." My description isn't immediately making her jump onto the mat, so I just plonk myself down, gesturing for her to follow. "Trust me," I say, looking into her eyes. There's hesitation there; it's clear she just wants to climb into bed, move past the conversation, and likely close off again, but her curiosity is making her waver. I just smirk, and say "You know, I took all food. You want to eat, then sit." The ghost of a smirk crosses her face, and she responds, "I could easily take it back from you."

"Not if I eat all first," I say, reaching for the first piece of jerky in my lap, as though prepared for a race. It gets an actual, if brief, smile out of her, and she ends up capitulating, sitting down on the other end of the mat. The fabric is barely big enough for the both of us, but we have enough space to place down the food without needing to put any of it into the dirt. "Alright. Now what?" she says, clearly unsure about what we are actually 'doing'. "We eat. We talk. Maybe we look at stars. It pretty." I say, as I take a bite out of some of the preserved food. Like most of the dugouts, it's more tower jerky and lirra, which is some sort of really solid bread. It was closer to a cracker than bread, but Ko-lee was adamant that crackers were a totally different thing, and in any case, the protein and carbs hit the spot after a long day of hiking, so I wasn't incredibly bothered by the nomenclature. "Do I have to talk?" she asks, reaching for a piece of the lirra, water in the other hand. I just shake my head. "No, I'll talk for both of us."

There's a moment of silence, since while I was enthusiastic about the idea of conversation, I didn't actually have any topics to talk about that weren't emotional landmines. I can feel my brain grasping and discarding topics quickly while I stare at the stars, the sight clearer than anything I had ever seen back home. "I love sky out here. It is..." I start, not entirely sure of where I'm taking the conversation. "It is busy. Uhm. Lots of stars, more than I see. But there is no moon, which is so odd. It should be there, and big. It is so white, and... holes," I say, my hand motion miming an asteroid crashing into the surface of the moon. I can see from the corner of my eye that Ko-lee's attention is captured, and various emotions keep popping up on her face; enthusiasm, confusion, interest, sometimes suspicion. It's a complex tapestry, but my mind is so focused on finding all the words needed to continue that I barely have a moment to comprehend it. "It is far, normal. Normally, I mean. Like planet, but not as far as planets. But even still, it always looks like you can just grab it. It is right there, you think, but it's not. It feeled... felt... felt like magic. Our magic."

Ko-lee is silent for a moment, digesting my words, then says, "You know, I've heard mseo tell stories about the moon. What it used to look like. But there was a story ulqatiy to them. It never quite felt... real, I guess. The way you talk about it though... you talk like you've seen it." "I have," I say, the words slipping out of my mouth before I can think about what I'm saying. "No you haven't," says Ko-lee, the look in her eyes clearly expressing her doubt. "I really have," I say in response. "I've already started digging the hole. Might as well finish it." "I did see it. I will maybe tell you some day, explain more. It is a long story, and I am not good with words," "Yea, I noticed," she says, her amusement barely hidden. "Yea," I say, fully turning to look at her. "My teacher is not the best."

"OH? Really! That's crazy because you only started learning a month ago, and you can already speak how well? I think I'm doing great, actually!" she says in faux outrage, a true smile breaking out on her face. "Month? 30 days?" I ask, feeling a bit off kilter from her statement. "Yea, thereabouts," Ko-lee says, her head nodding along to her words. "Wow, thats... It not feels like month," I say, my smile faltering slightly. "A lots happened, I guess," I think, but I keep my mouth shut. We go back and forth a few more times, finishing up our food and poking fun at my stilted use of the language.

Eventually, we head back in.