As the ship curled through the air, flames dancing around the hull in a scorching ballet of ash and smoke, the loudspeaker crackled into life for the final time.
"All control of the ship has been lost. I repeat, all control has been lost. Brace for impact."
Crumpled together like sandbags on a flood barrier, they huddled close and awaited their fate. In the end, the people on board the shuttle did not have time to brace. They did not have time to say goodbye; to confess things that should have never stayed secret; to consciously be with their wives and husbands and children for their final moments.
They could only hold one-another and weep for their stolen time.
And then, as the rounded body of the ship struck the rock and stone of the blackened Earth, they died.
Skittering along the rocky outcrop of exposed canyon beneath the hulking wreckage of an old colony freighter, a tired little machine searched for a spark of Light in the endless Darkness. She was old now - even for a Ghost - and her patience and hope were being drawn from dwindling reserves. As she scanned the ground beneath her she felt the presence of a thousand souls, all trapped in a limbo between Dark and Light - destroyed by one, but never abandoned by the other, even after millennia in the dirt. The Ghost pushed her sorrow to the back of her mind. She was not here to mourn the dead - there had been enough of that. She was here on the same quest that she had been following for close to two hundred years now; the search for one spark of Light that was brighter than the others, that cast its glow the farthest and repelled the Darkness with the greatest ferocity. When she found that spark she would use her own Light to revive a being who would assist the last remaining city on Earth in the fight against that same Darkness.
A spark this bright was rare, however. Exceedingly rare. It could only be found within the residue of a soul with the purest of hearts and most selfless of desires. A creature of the kindest disposition. This was what Guardians of the city were made of; the sole want for the amelioration of Earth and the lives of its inhabitants.
The reason she had chosen to search this particular area - an open plain of gravel and shrubs which had been blackened by relentless Arc cannon strikes from Fallen Ketch ships in orbit and scarred by the impact of the crashed ship - was due, morbidly, to the sheer number of deaths that had occurred here as the evacuation freight shuttle had been shot down as it had tried to break orbit. The more people that had perished in an area, the higher the chance was that a Guardian could be found among the wreckage. The Ghost whistled through ancient rusted debris, some shards nearing six storeys, protruding from the ground like thrown knives. She scanned the ground and scrap as she went, picking up signs of Light and of potential subjects for revival.
She was following an old tarmac road towards the centre of the wrecked shuttle; towards the epicentre of death which harboured, ironically though not comedically, the greatest abundance of Light. An old road sign stood, crumpled and torn at the side of the road. The Ghost stopped, distracted by writing that could still be read faintly:
'EDINBURGH 14 MILES'
This meant nothing to her. The city the sign referred to had been annihilated long ago, along with all the rest. She blinked twice, her vibrant green eye glinting in the spitting rain that had just started to fall, and moved on.
As she neared the main body of the ship, a sudden cry rang out in the distance, throaty and terrible to unaccustomed ears. The Ghost stopped dead. This was not what she had planned for. She was confused. Fallen - the fierce, territorial pirates who had led many of the strikes on the Last City since the collapse of the Golden Age - never ventured this far East. She replayed the cry over and over in her head and identified it as a scouting party, presumably from the House of Huntsmen; the Fallen House who had claimed rule over most of the large island once known as 'Britain'. She had to hurry. The rain, now coming down in sheets, would mask her movement until the scouts drew close enough to see her through the scopes of their Wire Rifles. This gave her time, but not much. Dimming her eye to avoid glare, her search continued.
Twenty minutes after the first cry had rang out over the wasteland, the second one came, this time it sounded substantially closer. It reverberated off of the peeling walls of the shuttle's interior. The Ghost frantically searched through the body of the ancient vessel; through room after room after room of debris and faint wavering pools of Light. If she was not hasty she would be captured and tortured by the scouts for information. She had seen it happen - ghosts left as nothing but smouldering husks of their former selves, drained of Light and intelligence. She refused to allow that same fate to befall her. She quickened her pace to a rush. Finally, her scanners picked up something different. Something she had not felt in a very long time.
"Could it be?" She whispered to herself in the musty darkness.
There was a chamber with a locked door but she could still feel it: The sheer force of the Light behind the steel plating. She closed her eye and activated all of her sensors at once. It bathed her in warmth as she drew closer, the same sort of warmth she had only felt from being near a Guardian or the Traveller itself. The tendrils of Light wrapped themselves around her tiny body and drew her near. Excited she opened her eye and began to work frantically on unlocking the damaged door. She dissolved the hinges and it came crashing down below her, falling through a hole in the floor and tumbling into the dark of the upturned vessel, smashing into walls with a force and racket that she only assumed could be heard for miles. If the Fallen had not known she was here then they certainly did now. Entering into the room she activated her torch and scanned the surroundings. It was a medical bay. All of the equipment had slid down the sloping floor and had piled up against the far wall, creating a huge bastion of ancient rust and fabric. Bones were dotted around the room, scattered like skittles.
In the centre of the chamber were six Light signatures, clustered and interwoven, with another signature slightly detached from the rest. This was the source of the Light the Ghost was feeling. The seventh orb was huge and powerful, pulsating outwards, carving through the darkness. The Ghost gave a small electronic giggle.
"There you are!" She hummed with glee. "I've finally found you."
This was her time. The moment she had prepared herself for. She cleared her mind and summoned all available Light she could muster to herself, her body splitting into orbital form in order to accommodate the power. With a peaceful sigh she focused all of the Light into the seventh orb and formed a glowing mesh around it, using its residual Light memory to begin to sculpt a body. She drew directly from the distant Traveler itself and used the power to knit flesh and bone back together. Blood and organs formed and skin appeared in a transmatic flash of blue and silver. Finally, the Ghost dematerialised an amount of the surrounding metal and fabric from the bulk of the freighter and used it to fashion a basic cloth covering and lightweight armour around the kneeling figure. The final product was a young human male, perhaps in his early twenties from appearance, with a shock of brown hair and pale skin. He was bent over, breathing softly, with his eyes closed and his arms resting on his knees. The Ghost, attempting to mask the elation she felt due to her success, made a sound similar to someone clearing their throat.
"Ehem... Excuse me? Guardian? Can you hear me?"
The man looked up, his eyes blotchy but electric blue, and his mouth opened to speak.
"I... I don't... Where am I?"
"Don't be scared, Guardian. You are alive, there is no need to be wary. I am your Ghost, I found you here and returned you to life because I need your help."
"Wait, I don't understand. I... I died. I remember..."
The man looked around at the rotting carcass of the ship; taking in the rusting walls; the odd angle that it sat at due to its impact; the bones littering the floor.
"Everyone was killed. We were shot down, by a huge brown ship... It chased us for miles... Kept hitting us with Arc blasts. Oh shit..."
He buried his head in his hands as the memories of his death came raging back into his ancient brain. His breath was rapid, the Ghost could hear his heart beating out of his chest. She had not expected him to be this distressed. She hadn't ever had to deal with a situation like this before.
"I... I am sorry, Guardian. I had no idea how you had died. I am very sorry for what you have lost, but I must stress to you that we are being hunted. We must move to a safe place, now."
"Hunted? By the creatures in that brown ship? Hang on, what even are you? Some sort of A.I.? How..."
"Guardian, please. I need you to listen. I will answer all of your questions when we reach safety. Right now I need you to do exactly as I say."
The man looked taken aback at her urgency. He considered this for a moment, his mouth opened to retort, and then closed again.
"Right, ok. You need to promise me that you'll tell me what you did to me and answer all of my questions when we are safe. If you don't then I'm not going anywhere with you."
"Yes, yes. I'll tell you everything as soon as we get back to the City. Now, this way, and stay quiet!"
The Ghost whizzed out of the door. The man took a final look around, his eyes lingering over the bones strewn on the floor. Somehow he knew they were the bones of his family, his friends. He turned away, fighting tears, and made to follow the little machine - his Ghost, it had called itself - into the depths of the freighter.