Destiny (c) Bungie

Ace of Spade

Chapter One

He couldn't remember much before the all-enveloping darkness.

Only vague and jumbled wisps of memory. Details had been all since lost, but the last thing that followed him into the nothingness was a victorious gurgling sound like mocking laughter and the sensation of falling. Another image was of a woman far older than he. Familiar. Acidic and raged. Bloodied and broken. He could not recall words, but he knew he'd damned and shunned her before turning his back forever, leaving the woman to a blighted fate.

Above all that, the strongest feeling he had was that of searching… no, more intense than that.

Hunting.

Guardian…?

He had been hunting, tracking down a target. Whatever that someone or something was lost to him in this inky blackness. But it seemed to desperately important at the time. Even now it held a commanding weight over him, like his entire existence had hinged on that one discovery. Coupled with an overriding sense of failure and guilt that he could not find this thing he was looking for.

Guardian, can you hear me?

The tinny voice spoke again, piercing through the haze into the deepest layers of his mind. Like a moth drawn to flame, he found himself pulled towards it and yanked out of the depths of oblivion.

Oh please tell me I didn't break him already? That would be so awkward to explain to the Vanguard…

The voice grew firmer, louder in his ear before he realised it was real. His eyes flickered open, though the effort took all of his strength, and his eyes felt as if they had been crushed over by a long slumber. His vision came into focus, only to be confronted with a hovering glowing blue eye mere inches from above his nose.

"Whoa, holy hell!" The words were like knives in his throat. The Guardian bolted upright, scooting away slightly from the blue-eyed drone that peered at him quizzically, heart hammering painfully in his chest. It took a few seconds for the surprise to dull and for him to will his heart back into a more relaxed rhythm.

Glancing down at himself, he realised he wasn't dressed in normal clothing but rudimentary light armour. Including a helm which concealed his features but offered a perfect field of vision. Exactly where he'd got it from was a mystery, but the obvious answer was this tiny creature had gifted it to him. For what purpose? He could only guess at.

"Uh… Hi?"

"Oh thank goodness. I thought something had gone very terribly wrong. I'm so relieved it worked," the thing gushed in obvious relief then made a sound like clearing her throat. "I'm a Ghost – actually, now I'm your ghost. And you've… well, you've been-"

"Ack-" The Guardian interrupted her with a sound in his throat, massaging his throat firmly and testing his strained voice again. "Do… Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do - ugh, ouch, that is gonna take a while before it feels better, isn't it? Well, guess that means my illustrious singing career's on the back burner for now."

His throat was parched, and it felt like he'd swallowed a fist full of razor sharp glass. The Ghost simply stared at him in dumbfounded silence, caught off guard by his interruption.

The Guardian drew himself up to his knees and scanned his surroundings, trying to gain his bearings. Of course, his eye caught the first obvious thing, the large cracked concrete slab he'd been resting again. Split in half by jagged edges was an old cooperate logo in bold black letters, a 'CB' underlined by the words Clovis Bray.

He wasn't sure what started it, but his body started to shudder and shake. His heart filled to the brim with hatred as his hands curled into tight fists and a growl escaped his throat. "G-Guardian, are you okay?"

The voice seemed to come from both outside and inside his mind, snapping him back to reality. He bounced to his feet, his back deliberately at the ruined structure. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good. But, uh… what in hell is going?"

"Oh. Sorry. As I was saying before, you've been… well, dead for at least a few centuries. A lot of things have changed and you'll probably see a lot of things you won't understand – at least, not yet."

Already the man wasn't exactly sure what to make of the small Ghost creature, and he sensed on some level that she wasn't sure what to make of him either.

"… come again?" The Guardian turned his head towards her dumbfounded.

"You've been dead for a long time, I brought you back to life." The Ghost declared proudly while the Guardian nodded slowly as if indulging a child's bizarre tale.

"And what's a floating D8 want with lil' old me? I'm just a random… living… un-living? Undead?" The Guardian mused on it for a moment, stroking his helm in a thinking gesture. "Well, I don't have a ravenous need for devouring the flesh of the living, so I wouldn't call myself a 'zombie'… I dunno, what would you call this?"

"May we focus please?" The Ghost questioned firmly, then made another little sound. "Listen, we're in Fallen territory and I need you to trust me. There's a small fireteam of Guardians six hour's hike from here. If we can rendezvous with them, we'll be able to get a lift back to the Last City."

The Guardian raised his hand, then crossed his arms petulantly. From his tone, it was apparent he was pouting under that helmet. "Fine, survival first, existentialism later..."

The Guardian set on his way, moving cautiously through the collapsed terrain guided along the way by his Ghost. Outside the confines of the industrial sector, they walked along the winding lines of rusted transports. The Guardian couldn't help but wince every time he passed a skeleton.

"Why choose me?" He questioned, now resolute on keeping his eyes ahead. "You've got a literal field of other choices."

"I had a whole solar system actually… The truth is; I don't know." The Ghost replied honestly, turning its eye on him as they continued. "All I know is I listened to the Light, and it guided me to you."

"... So, you got a name?" The Guardian asked after about half an hour's silence.

"Most guardians just call us 'Ghost' until they give us a different name." The small drone replied, her rear fins whirring slightly as her solitary eye shone a light on their way. "A few more prefer just to call us what we are."

"Yeah, that's boring." The Guardian said, "How about Dusk? You look like a 'Dusk' to me."

"Dusk?" The Ghost gave him a look before she hummed in approval. "I like it. And what's your name?"

The Guardian paused in his stride, his eyes on the ground and his brow etched in a deep frown. What was his name? "Acker... or Ace. I think. I might have been called both at one point..."

For some reason, the word filled him with regret and longing. The very same kind he felt in the darkness, thinking of that thing he was hunting. "We'll just stick with 'Acker' for now. 'Ace' makes me feel like crap... not too sure I remember why."

Dusk drooped slightly and seemed hesitant to speak. "Yes, Guardians tend not to remember who they were before being revived. I'm not sure if it's a by-product of the reanimation or simply biological fact. Save for a few rare exceptions, most Guardians are found long after brain death. In your case, a very long time afterwards. Even if the brain was restored, it's unlikely any of the memories would be recovered."

"Huh, that's gonna be f-" Acker muttered but his next words were cut off by an alarm from Dusk.

"Fallen!" She whispered, Acker's eyes darted around for cover before he sprinted to a small alcove under an up-heaved segment of asphalt hidden by overgrowth.

He skidded under it, his stomach pressed flat against the ground and one hand subtly pushing a shrub in front of him, enough to cover the gleam of his helm while still letting him view the incoming hostiles.

Activating Heads Up Display. Dusk's voice in his mind almost made Acker jump and crack his head on the asphalt, but he thought wiser of it. In the corner of his vision, a small circular radio screen pulsed showing red dots approaching his location. It wasn't long before he had a visual on them.

A small caravan of Fallen soldiers trudged along through the rusted carcasses, their weapons primed and ready with a Servitor backing their way.

See that big one in front wearing the house banner? Dusk's voice chimed in his mind, He's a Kell. We don't want to mess with these guys, not yet.

Tentatively, Acker returned with thoughts of his own. And definitely not without a weapon. I ain't got a knife or anything. I don't suppose there's anything here we can use to escape? Cause I have serious doubts about whether or not we'll make it to that fireteam you mentioned.

He heard Dusk sigh quietly. If a Kell's roaming in the open like this, it means the Fireteam must have departed already. How could I be so stupidly naive? The Fallen moved in far quicker than I anticipated.

Acker shook his head as much as the confined space allowed for. Look, hindsight's 20-20. So, do you think we can find some old bucket of bolts in the Cosmodrone? Or somewhere in the City? Doesn't have to be fancy, just has to get us the hell out of dodge…

Scanning. Dusk replied, her joints expanded and she was silent for a long ten seconds. Found one – there's an Arcadia class craft, just inside an old hanger approximately seven hundred and eighty-one metres to the south south-east. Your ten o'clock. Marking.

A small grey diamond the size of his pinkie nail appeared in his field of vision, smack dab on top of a structure. Straining his eyes, Acker could just make out the rooftop of a largely intact hanger, the solitary standing structure amongst the decay.

"Not a lot of cover between there and here, we'll have to be smart about it. That means you'll have to find somewhere to hide." Acker told her and Dusk bobbed up and down as a nod.

"We need to get moving - hold still." Dusk agreed, zooming towards him then disappearing in a quick flicker of electric blue.

"Wha-"

"Its okay, I'm still with you." Dusk reassured over his helmet com link, "I'll keep out of sight and monitor the Fallen movements."

"Guess this means we'll see if I was good at track in a previous life." Joking aside, Acker glanced at the motion detector. The Fallen were just inside its range and the second the red dots vanished, he crawled out the space and broke into a sprint along the winding rusted lines. Vaulting over obstacles as they came, and over car lanes to gain better footing.

"Hanger coming up, two hundred metres on your eleven o'clock." Dusk reported, "Scanning… The front bay doors are sealed shut, but there's a breach in the side wall, we can slip in through there."

Acker skidded to a halt at the final stretch, glanced at his motion tracker for signs of activity before making the last few metres to the Hanger's side wall. He managed to find the gap in the wall, a narrow crack that he had to turn sideways to slip in.

Pausing for a moment, he peered back through the hole. As far as he could see from this angle, the coast was clear. Now, he could turn his attention to the hanger's contents. He stood on a rusted metal maintenance walk two stories off the ground.

An old vessel hung haphazardly from the ceiling suspended by numerous support cables. Dusk reappeared beside his head and zoomed towards the craft.

"Well, that's a crusty old relic and a half..." Acker commented, walking along the gantry. He peered to his sides, both sets of stairs to the ground floor had been worn away with time. Against his better judgement and with a deep breath, he vaulted over the railing and landed in a crouch. He blinked and straightened up, feeling no worse for ware.

Why didn't that hurt as much as it should have…? or at all... ? Acker wondered with some confusion but dismissed it a second later, returning his attention to the Ghost.

"Its been here a while," Dusk told him with a small note of concern. Her blue eye scanning through the vessel. "Arcadia class. Its hyperdrive is missing – we'll have to scavenge one later."

"Long as it can fly to that City of yours, I don't care if its older than dirt and rusted to the frames." Acker replied, hands on his hips.

"I can get it working again," Dusk declared then she zipped out of sight, leaving Acker alone in the hanger bay.

While he waited, his mind started to recount the last hour in detail. But more than that, he started to drift back even further to the ghostly images he recalled in that blackness. He even tried to hazard a guess as to why he'd been chosen for this 'Light' business over the dozens of people they passed. What exactly did that Light stuff mean? Aside from bringing back the dead, what was he supposed to do with it? Was he supposed to use it? If so, how?

One thing was for certain: Dusk was right, he was confused.

"AGH!" A bullet pierced through Acker's right shoulder blade, tearing through the lung. Another round hit the back of his right knee, exploding the joint and sending Acker face-first into the dirt. The Guardian howled in pain, though it was quickly replaced with undiluted rage.

"Acker!" Dusk's voice cried out from without and within.

"Damn it!" Acker cursed, tasting blood in his mouth and his breathing hardened. "Damn it, if he'd just waited two more goddamned seconds!"

Acker rolled over, blood puddling from his body. His teeth gritted in fury at the Kell lumbering towards him, its scorch cannon aimed at his torso. The Kell couldn't get far before Acker heard the Arcadia hum to life, now looming menacingly over them all like an old predator. The cables holding it in place snapped and twanged, releasing the craft from its bonds.

"Bringing you in!"

Dusk's panicked tone was the last thing he heard before he'd slipped into unconsciousness.