Disclaimer: I do not own or claim to own Destiny. The copyright goes to Bungie and Activision.
Today was just like any other day. The Eastern docking bay was alive with the steady thrum and chatter of stellar turbines igniting and turning over. Guardians and civilians alike were taxiing down the multitude of runways to and from the city, as well as fully-armed assault ships spinning up warp drives in preparation to take to combat, far from the safety of the Last City.
It was just another day in the life of a certain tinkering woman on the bare-back of a shabby looking jump ship from decades, maybe even centuries back. She was waist-deep in the innards of the large starboard engine, trying everything in her might to salvage the primary turbine.
"Where did you say you found this thing?" she asked from under the bundles of frayed wires and jagged plates. The only thing that could be seen by the ships current owner, who also sat atop the hull closer to the cockpit, was a pair of orange pants, work boots and a similarly orange jacket tied around the woman's waist.
"The Cosmodrome.." came the response in the form of the external speakers of a standard proto-suit. From the garbled, low quality sound, Phae couldn't tell who, or what was on the other side of that helmet.
"Riiight.." she quipped, not attempting to hide the sarcasm in her tone. "So were you on patrol and just happened upon this heap of-... well, this heap?" Phae's voice echoed out of the oddly shaped chamber, which was definitely not designed for an engineer to fit in comfortably.
"Patrol? Uh.. n-no, I was.. well," the masked pilot stuttered in an attempt to tell their tale, to no avail. Phae still couldn't peg them for a man or a woman through that mis-fitted gear, then it dawned on her.
"Ooh! I get it!" she cooed as the rest of her body finally emerged from the engine compartment to reveal an Awoken woman with bone-white skin and mid length midnight blue hair tugged back by a black headband. "So this was your cherry?" she concluded with a knowing grin.
Phae sat there, watching and waiting for the other to respond, until about five seconds later she got a confused response. "Cherry?"
The enthusiastic engineer's smile melted and she waved a hand in the air, "Never mind.." So boring, these newbies are never reborn with a sense of humor. "Anyway," she began again with a clap of her blackened, greasy hands, "she's a real piece of work. Well.. she's a piece of something." Phae looked off into the distance as she spaced out and mentally recited the variables at hand, counting each on her fingers. "First things first, the warp drive. There isn't one. The primary rotary bearings are nearly ground smooth, and it's amazing they haven't sheared straight through the coupling yet. What else.. what else.. ah yes, the sub-orbital navigational system still works; assuming this thing would hold together long enough, you might be able to limp back to the Cosmodrome and find spare parts. I'd point you somewhere around the Tower, but this thing is outdated at best, and obsolete at worst. Sorry pal…"
With the nameless Guardian hunched over and looking rather disheartened, Phae hopped up and reluctantly made her way off the battered vessel. She felt guilty for not being able to make her space-worthy again, but there's only so much one person can do. With one final drop, she landed on the deck and glanced back to the pitiful ship one last time. You can't win them all, she thought before turning and walking off to the hangar bay housing her own fixer-upper.
She pulled the band keeping her hair pinned back off and shook the loose grime from skulking on the inside of a ship free. Just because someone comes in with a lost cause of a ship doesn't mean she was going to give up on her own impossible feat of a repair job. During the long trek back to her hanger, Phae mentally and methodically listed off things she would try today, before a blood-curdling screech of metal-on-metal erupted from the primary dock behind her. With gritted teeth and a clenched fist, she cursed her luck under her breath.
The organized, peaceful atmosphere in the hangar mere moments ago was replaced by a frantic scramble to action. The burning, mangled form of a jump ship scorched the deck a sooty black, and gouged deep grooves in the solid steel from the impact. All idle engineers were called to action in light of the event, though most of the seasoned vets would have done the same regardless. Despite the fact she wasn't a veteran mechanic by any stretch of the imagination, Phae answered the call.
"Hey! Easy with that thing!" she heard from the pinnacle of the smoldering wreck as a Guardian leapt free of the hull. "You're gonna break the fuc-..." The raving Guardian lost a bit of kick in his step as the already dying ship took a nose-dive. "Aw shit... You know what? I don't care," he scoffed, scanning the bustling dock and locking his sights on Phae before stomping towards her with obvious impatience. "Hey, Little Miss Transcendence , where's the Shipwright? I gotta get an estimate on scrapping this heap of junk. No point in carrying on with her anymore."
"Well, maybe if you let the autopilot do its job, this wouldn't happen." The smooth voice of a Ghost filled the deck, and the Guardian began swatting at the air.
"Don't tell me what to do! I'll drive however I damn well please. If you have a problem with it, maybe we should take this outside!"
The Ghost spun in a slow, deliberate circle, "We are outside."
"Don't get smart with me you glorified toaster with wings. You know what we called things like you in my day? Navi."
Phae's eyebrows perked up at the mention of the past, and she had to interject. "Wait wait wait.. You...remember your past life?"
The irate Guardian turned away from the floating nuisance before him to cast his gaze on the Awoken engineer before him, "Uh….duh?" he mocked with a tilt of his head.
"Huh.." Phae made a mental note to drill this "Guardian" - if she would dare call someone so vulgar such - for details later. Something was nagging at the back of Phae's mind, then she realized that the sheer lack of respect in this odd soldier distracted her from the task at hand. Phae swiftly pushed past the armored Titan - of which until that moment, she hadn't taken the time to realize he actually was a Titan - and rushed toward the burning ship. She untied the jacket around her waist and quickly slipped her arms through the sleeves of the fire-retardant suit while assessing the damage from afar, before the same voice broke her attention once again.
"Hey! I asked you a question!" the man called, now more annoyed than concerned for the loss of his ship.
Phae stopped in her tracks, spun on a heel in the same motion, and marched straight to the arrogant Titan. She reached forward and tucked her fingers in a gap between the armored plates just below the neck of the Guardian's armor and yanked his face forward. "I don't give a shit what you want," she hissed, "Because of you, there are people risking their lives to put out the fires of the burning wreck that YOU personally caused. So you can just sit your happy ass down and wait." For a split second, Phae just stared at her furious reflection in the polished face-shield of the Titan's helmet before giving him a strong push, putting him off balance.
Stomping off in the opposite direction toward the wreck, Phae fumed and vented through her inner thoughts. Guardians, what would we do without them? Such a shining example of the moral standard.
"Jeez.. somebody's bitchy today." Roarke folded his arms before his chest, stubbornly fuming from the woman's pointed words.
"She's right, you know," responded his Ghost with no trace of a snarky tone.
"Oh, be quiet, you accursed flying rock," Roarke said as he turned to look at the livid woman pointing about as if giving orders, then, hopping onto the side of his damaged ship, proceeding to remove a small golden hoop from one of the pockets on her person. "Would you look at that? That's a Bond!"
"Yes, the Bond of a Warlock. She is a Guardian as well," his Ghost supplemented, as if it were the most obvious, elementary of concepts.
"Really? I never gathered!" Roarke rebutted, irritation practically dripping from his voice. His arms falling from his chest, as he relaxed his posture and watched the strange Guardian work. "What I wanna know," the irate Titan vaguely pointed towards the wreck, "is why the hell a Guardian would be down here doing a Techie's work instead of going to good ol' terra-firma to stomp some Fallen ass?"
Phae picked up the pace from a brisk walk to a jog in order to close the gap between herself and the crippled jump ship. As she rejoined her fellow engineers, it became painfully obvious who was and was not used to this kind of chaos by now.
"Hey! Look alive!" she bellowed as she jumped onto the scorched hull. "This is no different than what you do every day; now is not the time to gawk like you've never seen a burning ship before!" Her words finally broke the hypnotic trance that had gripped the greenest of the Engineering Corps.
With practiced motions, Phae produced a golden metal band from one of her jacket pockets and laced it around her left bicep. The two ends of the open loop touched and snapped together, tightening the slack with just enough force to snugly fit around her arm. As the connection was made and the Bond settled, she could feel her connection to the Light reignite. With the Light of the Traveler coursing through her veins, the world seemed to slow in its spin and the warm glow of her own inner Light bloomed.
"Alright, listen up! I want three crews on deck. Jackson: you're on skiff duty. Dante, Kael, you'll be coordinating with Jackson. Shriek: I need you to take a couple guys and gear up in thermal suits, you're on the fires. Double-time boys! We can't let them reach the fuel tanks." Jackson peeled off and made a dead sprint for the innermost wall of the hangar where the orbital skiffs were. Meanwhile, Shriek, an Exo engineer, tallied off two of the more experienced mechanics before following and making a break for the command deck to equip thermal-rated suits. "The rest of you! I need two cutting rigs, don't bother with the specifics, and a set of precision tools ASAP. Move people! That reactor is sitting pretty and ready to blow; we're on the clock!"
With that, Phae left the rest of her comrades to their respective tasks as she spun and began her own job. She gently rested her right palm on the blackened hull, allowing a barrier between her hand and the metal to halt the conduction of heat. After applying pressure and equalizing the shield under her hand, Phae emitted a pulse of energy through her palm which echoed through the mass of electronics and advanced machinery. She closed her eyes and maintained a rhythmic pulse every few seconds, trying to find an easily accessible fault in the armored plates.
It didn't take long to find a suitable chink in the ship's armor, which was perfect timing given the steady thrum of engines that now approached her from behind. Phae positioned herself parallel to the fault, rested her left knee and hand on the hull, and struck the fault with her right hand, bearing down as much void energy as she could muster. Purple waves radiated from her body and channeled down the length of her arm, before cascading and splitting a nearly foot wide crack in the hull. She stood and took a conscious step back, still giving off a faint purple glow as Dante and Kael each slipped a matching steel hook tied to the nearby floating skiff with sturdy heavy-duty cables.
"She's on!" bellowed Dante, one of the youngest engineers in the Corps. Both Dante and Kael cleared the vessel and jumped to the deck, while Phae kneeled and braced for the acceleration. Once the others were clear, she gave a thumbs-up to Jackson in the cockpit. Seconds later, support structure of the outer hull began to bow and groan in protest as the small skiff pulled and began slowly ripping the ship apart, before the armor peeled off like paper from the force. With the central structure of the ship exposed, Phae directed her attention to the rest of the crew who were now returning, fully prepared for the task at hand.
Phae gave a half smile, feeling like these greasy gear-heads were the closest thing she could get to a family. She quickly shook the thought aside and began directing them once more. "Mason, take one of those cutters and follow Shriek. I need you to sever the fuel lines to the thrusters after they put out those fires. Jackson, Kael, Dante, I need you to keep cutting and get to the fuel tanks themselves; if we fail from one side, we need to shut it down from the other." She contemplated for a moment while chewing on her thumb. Here comes the fun part… "Layla, you're on deck. We're going for the reactor."
The only other female member of the crew at the moment, Layla, looked at her nervously, and glanced around at the other idle crew members.
"Are you sure? I mean, I'm not very experienced. I might screw things up," she chewed her lip, "wouldn't you want someone more qualified for this?"
Phae's smile reared its head again, and she responded in kind. "Of course I'm sure. You're just as motivated as anyone else here. And besides," she now broke out in a full grin, "wouldn't it be something if you got one up on these worn-out old sods?"
"Hey, now you're just making us look bad," chuckled one of the aforementioned sods. Without skipping a beat, everyone picked up the pace and almost doubled their efforts with raised spirits, leaving Layla to return the smile and join Phae atop the ship.
Even with that vote of confidence, Phae was still concerned that Layla's resolve may falter in the face of adversity.
"Don't worry, you'll do fine," she reassured with a smile. "Hey Zül! Send the tools up!" Upon her word, another Awoken engineer sent a rounded, angular crate with mounted hover pads towards the women. Once Phae and Layla had on hand any tools they would likely need on the interior of the ship, Phae turned her attention to the younger. "Alright, once we get in there, you don't need to worry about anything else. Our friends are making sure that the inside of this beater is the safest place to be right now. So: what is our goal?"
Layla paused for a moment and spaced out, recalling the drills from her training. The question wasn't rhetorical, but Phae wasn't asking for the answer either. She was making sure Layla stayed on the ball. "First, we need to minimize the power output from the reactor. Second, we need to carefully detach it as a power supply from the ship. Finally, we.. we-" she paused, stumped.
For just a moment, doubt creeped into Phae's mind as Layla struggled to remember, before a metaphorical light bulb sparked to life.
"Oh! Finally, we dissipate the power from the rest of the ship," the younger concluded with a distinct edge of triumph.
Nice going, kid, Phae thought with an ounce of pride in her comrade. If she were to be true to herself, she would have agreed with Layla; there were definitely more eligible candidates for a reactor retrieval present, but a Guardian's jump ship presented unique problems. The hulls were nigh on indestructible, however impaired they may be. It was too much of a hassle to field-strip a ship on the spot. With such an impromptu jury-rig, it left very little space to actually get inside the ship. In truth, Layla was the only option. The men wouldn't be able to fit, leave enough room for Phae, and somehow weasle an active reactor out all at the same time.
Phae knelt to the gash carved in the hull and got a firm grasp on the inner structure just below the armor layer. By simply applying a little pressure and channeling void energy through her palms, the molecular bonds in the steel sparked and nearly turned to slag at her touch. With bright purple flashes, a small section of the support structure was cut free, allowing Phae to pull the chunk out by hand and toss it aside. The flow of Light from the Traveler made seemingly impossible tasks the work of a child in perspective, greatly increasing one's strength and stamina.
"Shall we?" Phae offered with a smile before dropping feet first into the ship's fuselage. Layla quickly followed suit, taking care to avoid the still smoking burn marks in the metal struts. The inner framework of the jump ship was, to say the least, tight. Tight enough that the two women had to exhale to get through the first layer of wires and pipes. When they finally got to where they were going to set away at the task of dismantling the reactor, they were laying flat on their stomachs side-by-side with about a foot of space between the hull and the reactor casing itself. It didn't help that the space was dotted with the occasional support beam connecting the mechanical and structural components into a single cohesive object. "I need you to crawl that way and break into the box with a radioactive symbol on it," Phae instructed.
When nothing happened, she looked to the side to find that Layla was giving her the most puzzling, accusational expression. "Are you sure I should be handling that?"
"No no no, it's not dangerous," Phae clarified with a chuckle and a smile, "that's just the main junction diverting power to the other subsystems. The real dangerous part," she paused as she gestured to the patterned blast door she was laying on, "is right here." Turning her attention back to the doors in question, Phae keyed a seven digit command code into the nearby control pad. Seconds later, several audible clicks and hollow thunks echoed through the compartment. "Alright, I need you to kill power to the hydraulics."
"Got it," Layla chimed almost as an after-thought. The next few minutes were filled with metallic clicks, followed by the simultaneous release of pressure in the form of high-pressure jets of air from several specific locations. One of those locations was both sides of the blast doors below Phae, allowing her to simply muscle it open with her bare hands, whilst under the protection of her barrier.
It didn't prove very difficult to open a gap for Phae to get her fingers in. She simply projected a localized field of energy and used the same method Warlocks use to hover in mid-air. Once there was a small gap open, she pried her fingers through and forced the doors wider. Almost immediately, a fiery red light spilled into the compartment. Phae had to cover her face and squint to compensate for the intense barrage on her eyes.
"What is that?" Layla quickly rattled off as she instinctually held up a hand in defense.
It took a considerable amount of willpower to open her eyes and fully take in the interior of the reactor, but once she did, Phae's expression was contorted by bewilderment and anger. "No. Oooh no, that pretentious ass-hat and I are going to have words."
From start to finish, it took nearly half an hour for the crew under Phae's supervision to resolve the crisis. Roarke sat idly by and waited - rather impatiently - for Phae to return so he could get that hunk of scrap off his hands. He was relieved to finally see her emerge from the hull of the now stabilized ship, carrying a blackened sphere under her right arm.
"Finally! What took you so fu- oof!" Roarke was quickly cut off as Phae spiked the heavy metal sphere straight into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. The impact and loss of breath quickly sat him back down, leaving him reeling.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Phae barked, furious.
"Wrong with me?! What the hell is-"
"Do you have any goddamn idea what this is?" she interrupted holding a metal pin notched with grooves and teeth in the Titan's face. "Do you?!"
Roarke took a moment to closely examine the object before answering. "No, why should I?" he wheezed, completely ignorant.
"This is a Cabal arming pin. It's a fail-safe that detonates the core in the case that one of us captures a Cabal assault ship."
"So? What's the big deal?" Roarke answered, once again getting impatient. Little did he know, he just pulled the pin on the ticking time-bomb that was the Awoken woman before him.
"So?! Had this pin not been faulty, your fucking stunt would have KILLED my entire crew!" Phae reached forward and grabbed a handful of cloth below Roarke's neck and lifted him to his feet. Her fury caused her to radiate a deadly looking purple aura as her eyes glowed bright neon-blue. She growled and shoved him back several feet with one hand and let go, causing the Titan to catch his balance before he fell. "Get the hell off my deck."
Phae pushed past the arrogant Titan before she snapped and made a decision she would regret. "Geez…what was her problem?" he asked, still completely oblivious to the averted disaster.
"You know, sometimes I wonder if I really did choose the right person or not," came an unwanted answer as his Ghost orbited Roarke's head before stopping in front of his faceplate.
The Titan gritted his teeth and tried to resist the urges to throw his Ghost like a baseball. "Don't tempt me, you little wind-up toy."
Author's Note: Hello Destiny community! Well, at the time of writing this, there aren't many of you out there (I think), but that's never stopped me. With the glorious launch of Bungie's newest masterpiece just four short days away, I can't help but say how excited I am. Also, how much of a horrendous understatement "excited" really is for me right now.
Anywho, on with the show. I hope you enjoyed this little slice of the imagined lives of a few friends' and my own Guardians who will be born anew into the Universe very soon.
Until next time, friends
See you on the other side~