The next ten seconds were tense.
The Fallen around the room stood stock still, keeping their weapons trained on the entryway. Connor was among them, hunkered in the middle of the room next to Arlak, whose scorch cannon gleamed in the light.
Smoke from the trip mines filled the hallway, but they could hear movement and the soft moaning from the Shells down the hall. Breathing slowly he adjusted his scope slightly to compensate for the close range.
A shape shambled slowly out of the shadows. "Ready yourself!" One of the Fallen shouted. Out from the smoke and shadows shuffled Ikora Rey.
Her robes were soaked in blood, red and purple with rips in places where the shells had grabbed at her. Her legs were twisted at angles so she stumbled as she walked. Along her arms and face her skin was grey, with patches of purplish bruises. Her eyes were obsidian black with lines akin to black veins spreading out across her face.
With only a moment's hesitation, and a silent apology, Connor took his shot. He pulled the trigger on his Auto Rifle, and the thing that was once Ikora fell to the ground, several bullet holes trailing from her chest to her head. Behind her, dozens more shells shambled forward. Some of them were old; skin bleached and hair gone, while some of them still had some resemblance to their former self. Several fallen were among them as well, arms stretched forward or totally severed.
"Destroy them for the house of wolves and disgraced kin!" Arlak bellowed, letting loose a blast from his Scorch Cannon, turning the first wave of shells to ash. The other fallen opened fire, their blue projectiles lighting up the dark hallway. The scrap cannons did little and the Dregs hardly hit a thing, but the snipers made quick work of what got past the Shock rifles of the vandals and the combined fire of Connor's rifle, the "Will not bow", And Arlak's scorch cannon.
The battle seemed to go on for hours. The band of survivors kept up a stream of fire that kept them back, but soon ammo became a problem for Arlak and Connor.
"Three mags left!" Connor shouted, throwing a fiery orange grenade into the opening. It exploded with the force of a sun and burnt the shells within range to a crisp. The survivors of the blast slowly began to burn away.
"Skiff is inbound!" Jeffry exclaimed joyously, hovering much above the action.
The light in the room took on a blue glow as the Fallen skiff flew low, nearly landing to pick up the Fallen. Its frontal guns opened fire at the door, holding back the hoard.
"Thank God," Connor said, a smile blooming under his mask, "Jeffry, I do believe I owe several hunters rather substantial stacks of glimmer now."
"What would you bet on at a time like this?" Arlak Inquired, giving him a disbelieving look. Or at least, what Connor thought was a disbelieving look. With the mask on, he couldn't really tell what his face was doing.
"It's a long-standing bet. I had a rather closed mind towards aliens back in the day, and I bet them that I would never be glad to see a Fallen skiff."
The laugh that might have boomed forth from Arlak was quelled as a Dreg ran over and spoke to him in their native tongue. Arlak then shook his head and shouted at the dreg. It cowered and fled towards the skiff.
"There has been a problem."
"Not again," Connor complained, the smile fading, "Are the engines out again?"
"No," Arlak responded, hoisting his Cannon back to his shoulder, "The pilgrim group was larger than we expected. The other skiff is full, and Guardian Kira was left behind."
"Why?" Connor shouted, looking panicked. Kira was one of the hunters he had trained for the longest time. She was young, barely 18, and had been like a sister to him for years. She had been chosen as a hunter five years ago and at the time he had felt a rush of compassion towards the 14 year old, thrown into a world full of monsters and fear. "She was sharing Thomas' jumpship, wasn't she?"
"She was," Arlak confirmed, "But she had him take a mother and her child instead. She is holding at the top of a building, but the hive infected are near to her. They will overtake her soon."
"Damn it!" Connor spat, his mind instantly made up, "Go for her then."
Arlak looked at him in disbelief, "Guardian Connor, I cannot do that. You must return to the fleet and present the spark, otherwise Hideo will take over."
"You don't need me for that," he said, giving his old friend a hard look, "Sarna and Levi can handle themselves. Plus, Thomas, Kira and Dusk can support them. And…you'll have Rachel. She'll be the next Hunter Vanguard if I go down. Besides, I have an idea."
"Oh no," Jeffry said, with the dread of someone told that there was good news and bad news.
"What?" Connor questioned, looking at his Ghost.
"Your plans frequently bring you within arm's reach of death," Arlak commented matter-of-factly.
"Well I can stay here and die or I can go through with the plan and maybe not die."
"I will trust your judgment." Arlak said after a moment, then grabbed his cannon with two hands and presented it to him.
"That's a gift from the Kell; I can't take it from you." Connor responded, slightly taken aback.
"But you must. You will need it."
"Don't worry, old friend." Connor said with a sly smile playing across his face. Which no one could see under his helmet, but it was there, "I have a backup plan."
Arlak nodded shouldered the cannon again and ran for the Skiff. Once he boarded, he turned and raised two hands in farewell, and Connor raised his own in response. He then shouldered his rifle and turned to look down the hall. His right hand flashed with orange light, brighter than the sun that shone above. The light shifted and compacted into the shape of a Hand Cannon. All sense of humor was gone from Connor's face now, replaced by a steely calm.
"Jeffry, call the ship. We've got ground to cover."
He gripped the gun with both hands and aimed down the hallway. With a silent prayer for success, he fired once bolt down the hallway. The beam of fiery light that shone forth disintegrated all the Shells in the hallway. Wasting no time he dashed down, Golden gun in one hand and a charged grenade in the other. He fired twice more, clearing the shells out at the head of the warehouse. He shot out of the doorway and immediately jumped high into the air, using his jump boosters to scale the building. He looked out across the Cosmodrome to see a sea of Shells. Human, Fallen and Hive, none were safe from the Shells. Far to the back of the crowd he saw a tall figure. A Turned Kell.
"Can't run," he said to himself, "Can't hide, so it's time to fight."
The clearing between the buildings was large, where most guardians landed. The Shells came from the left and right, but the Cliffside was clear.
"Think we can make it over there, Jeff?" he asked his ghost, pulling his Rifle from his back once again.
"I know that no matter what I say you'll try it anyway," his ghost replied, but devoid of the annoyance that would have been there usually. Now there was defiance and fear.
"Glad we're on the same page," Connor said, and leapt forward into the sea of Shells.
This had been Connor's life had been since he had been chosen as a guardian. Death, running, anger, fighting.
He thought about this as he jumped, his life slowly flashing before his eyes.
The first jump carried him far forward, but the Shells took notice of him and their hungry, grey eyes followed him.
He had been born into a pilgrim group in what had been North America. They had settled in a remote cave in the mountains, safely hidden from the hive and the fallen.
His second leap sent him sailing towards a crashed guardian ship, but several Shells ran towards him. "Great." he thought as he descended, "Runners"
It had been a hard life. From the age of ten he had been expected to work, either farming or helping hunt for food. Every day he focused on improving his strength and aim, every day another challenge. But his life got harder.
He set out during the winter he turned eighteen to hunt with two of his best friends. A week into it, however, one died from a sudden case of the flu, while the other had fallen into icy water. When Connor returned he had found their little homestead burnt to the ground. A group of fallen had come in, mere hours before, and leveled the little wood houses and farms.
As he landed, a runner leapt at him. He whipped out his knife and decapitated it. More of them began to clamber up, but he gunned them down, wasting no bullets. He leapt again, towards a nearby building.
His ghost found him then. He destroyed the fallen camp nearby and stole a Jumpship they had salvaged from somewhere in the collapse. When he returned and told his story, he joined the ranks of the hunters with a sense of pride. After a year of training he was strong and skilled enough to go solo, and spent a year or two hunting Fallen and Vex on Venus.
He barely made it to the building. One of the runners leapt up and grabbed onto his leg. It had been a human male who had once been well built. But once the plague took a hold of him his muscle meant nothing, rotting away till he resembled a skeleton. Connor used his free foot and knocked it free. He clambered to the top of the building and made a dash for the Cliffside.
A year before the guardian, the one who killed Oryx, was finally found, little Kira became the youngest guardian to join them in the history of the collapse. He had been present when she was brought to the tower, her voice small and her eyes wide with terror. Zavala deemed her too young to be effective on her own and had been preparing to have her work as an aid. But she wanted none of it. The hive had taken her parents from her, and she wanted to be out in the field fighting them. But no hunter was willing to have her travel with them.
None, that is, except Connor. He saw a young version of himself in her, wanting to prove herself and at the same time being terrified of what lay beyond the city. He took her as his apprentice, though he referred to her as his 'hunting partner.'
She stayed with him during the fiasco with the Vex, the rise of the House of wolves and the Taken war. When the Shells began to take over, nearly two years earlier, He had gotten her and his friends and allies out of the tower and onto a freshly built Dead Orbit ship.
The two of them, as well as Sarna, an Awoken warlock who had joined him in quelling a hive push to take the rocket yard, Leviathan-0, an Exo who had joined the trio in taking down the House of Wolves presence on Venus, and Rachel Castaway, A hunter who he had befriended right after they got over their nearly obsessive need to outdo/kill each other, had fought their way out of the hellhole the tower had become only to find the last city burning and the rest of the world slowly falling.
All of Connor's memories with Friends and family, new and old, flashed by in the thirty seconds it took to reach the cliff. He turned and readied his gun.
"How long until the gunship gets here, Jeffry?" Connor asked, watching as the Shells closed in.
"A few minutes," he said, "Just hold out."
And hold out he did. His gun spewed death, slaying countless shells. When he ran out of ammo, he switched to his shotgun. "Running out ammo again, Jeff," he growled, lobbing another Grenade, "How long?"
"It's here!" his ghost shouted, calling attention to his ship. It wasn't unlike an old pre-traveler fighter jet. Army green, the same color as Jeffry's shell, the Pheaton v2.1 screamed in from orbit, giving Connor momentary hope. But in the same moment, a massive portal opened and disgorged a hive dropship. It opened fire on his Jumpship, causing the auto-pilot to avoid and evade, doing a roll and flying away. "No. NO!" Connor shouted as it flew away, "Ghost, get it back here!"
"I can't!" his ghost exclaimed, "The Dropship will blow it out of the sky."
"Can't you transmat me up?" He asked, grasping at straws.
"The dropship is tampering with our tracker. I can't lock on to you, but I could send something small down."
Connor's thoughts buzzed quickly through his head, firing his last two shells into the crowd of Shells. "Ghost, transmat yourself to the ship and drop off my spare shotgun ammo and my sword. I'll go down fighting; you get the spark back to the Fleet."
"But, you'll die!" Jeffry cried, "I won't let that happen."
"I'm one guardian," Connor snapped, "The spark is everything. Go!"
Jeffry hesitated, and then responded, "Goodbye, Guardian. It's been an honor."
"Likewise, Jeffry." he returned, his eyes on the oncoming wave of Shells, "Tell everyone I said goodbye. And make sure Kira gets my ship and…"
He faltered a moment, "Tell Rachel I'm sorry. For everything."
His ghosted transmatted up to the Jumpship, leaving behind a crate of ammo and a long, orange tinted sword with enough power to last him a good while.
He threw grenade to keep the Shells off him, reloaded his shotgun and hefted the sword. "Alright, you shuffling numpties!" He shouted, brandishing his sword, "Come and get me!"
The next two minutes were a blur of red vision and dead bodies. He cut down dozens with his blade, untouched by Shell or the blasts being rained down by the hive ship. When his sword eventually lost its charge, he switched again to his shotgun and blasted away, felling any Shell that stood near him. When that ran out, he knew he only had moments. He, like so many others, would fall to the Shells. He, like so many others, would lose his light and life to the darkness. And he, like so many others, would die alone.
But he wasn't alone. A single shell shuffled ahead of the rest. It used to be an awoken, its skin now grey-blue and covered in bite marks. It was covered with bit marks, and over one eye it wore an Eye patch.
"Petra..." Connor said, sorrow overtaking him.
Petra Venj and he had struck up an alliance before the start of the Taken war. In exchange for constant updates on the location of the House of Wolves, he was free to return to the reef to resupply and reload, no matter what. At first, the two hardly exchanged a word. But before long they started to swap stories about fights they had been in, weapon specs and even sparrow racing.
Soon it became regular: Connor would spend a week or two on Venus or The moon, then he, Kira and whoever else of his group had joined them would take a day in the reef while they refueled their ships, resupplied on food and ammo, and during this time he would help Petra plan raids on the Wolves, organize attacks on skiff groups or just chat about life.
To see his long-time friend reduced to this shambling, moaning monster broke his heart. "Not you too," He said, looking at the thing that had once been his friend, "Ikora said you had escaped…"
He stood still too long. The creature was almost upon him.
"I am truly sorry, old friend. I hope, wherever you are, you can forgive me." He took up his knife, hesitated, and then threw it. It buried itself hilt deep in the thing's forehead, dropping it instantly.
He then looked out behind Petra's corpse. The Shells had not thinned, and more swarmed from all over, drawn to him by the noise of his guns and the dropship. He was out of options, out of tools and out of tricks.
He stood his ground, letting them come close. He closed his eyes and cleared his thoughts. "My soul may be freed, but you will not take my body," he said. When the first of them were nearly in reach of him, he fell backwards and over the cliff. As he fell, he thought of only one thing.
"I failed them all." And with this thought, he readied himself to become one with oblivion.