Chapter 3: Ruins
Old London, Northwest of 'Europe'
Much like when they had returned from the Moon, the flight out only took a few minutes. Soon enough, three ships in formation were flying out over the south east corner of what used to be known as 'England', towards the remnants of its capital city. A thick blanket of low cloud covered most of the country, so their ships dipped in low, breaking through the grey mist.
All three of their Ghosts were excitedly chattering away to their masters in turn, filling each in on a very brief history of London. Essentially, this was once the capital city of England, up to the time of the Collapse. Throughout the Golden Age the city's area had expanded considerably from its original size, which included a considerable spaceport on the southern edge, from where colony ships would launch off to colonize other worlds.
Logan could see it from his viewing port now, or rather what was left of it. He could see a few of the massive frames for keeping the ships upright during launch, all of them empty. There were several wrecked colony ships down there too, and it reminded Logan of the comosdrome in Old Russia, where he had first started his Guardian career, two years ago.
He cast his gaze back North, to the city itself. He saw a sprawling metropolis straddling a river which twisted this way and that, separated roughly by North and South. To the North there were tight clusters of old stone and brick buildings, most of them unchanged for centuries, and to the South of the river he saw more modern skyscrapers, glass and steel, though many of them were badly damaged.
"…and the colony ship yard here was largely funded by the research conglomerate Watson's Cybernetics who enjoyed a considerable monopoly amongst Golden Age tech in this part of the world…Logan, are you listening to me?"
"Hanging on your every word, Kal," Logan smiled, settling back into his seat and watching his controls for signs of impending AA attack. But there were no alarms or sirens blaring in his ears.
"No warnings for AA fire," Griff chimed through the speakers suddenly, echoing Logan's current thoughts. "I thought the Fallen had this city held down tightly."
"Me too," Elena added, "unless they're all hiding out of sight. Or maybe they already picked everything clean and moved on?"
"Really?" scoffed Griff. "The Cosmodrome is practically bare but the Devils and the Kings keep picking and picking away at it. They're worse than magpies. So I'm sure that London would last any self-respecting House a lot longer."
"Come on, when we touch down we'll find out soon enough," said Logan, cutting off the chatter. "Kal, how close can you get us down to Hyde Park?"
"Checking now," Kal's voice chimed, and then a few seconds later, "I'm seeing a relatively clear drop zone at the north end of Westminster Bridge. Most of the bridge is in the river now, but there should be enough space to drop all of you off. The roads are too clustered with traffic to drop you anywhere closer I'm afraid."
"Guess it'll have to do," Logan sighed. "Okay Onyx, you heard him. Set coordinates and be ready for touch down. We are entering potentially hostile territory."
"Copy that," Elena replied.
"Aye chief," said Griff.
Seconds later, the ships came in low above a bridge which had long ago collapsed into a black stripe of stagnant water once known as the River Thames, and there was the unmistakable white flash of a transmat taking place, and a split-second later all three were standing on the northern edge of Westminster Bridge, weapons in hand: scout rifle for Logan, auto rifle for Griff and handcannon for Elena.
Almost immediately they felt insignificant. On their side of the river was a massive tower featuring a huge clock at the top, half-crumbled over the decades, the huge clock hands rusted to a dirty red. The tower was attached to a long and grandly-decorated building that stretched south along the river side, which according to the twittering of Kal, was once the seat of this country's government, right up to the Collapse. They could also see where something huge had crashed down into the centre of said building, leaving a blackened crater.
On the opposite side of the river but further down from their current position, was a huge, wheel-shaped structure on the edge of the water, over a hundred feet tall. It had been white once, but rust and other decay had robbed it of most of its original paint, and it was decorated with the odd bulbous pod lined with windows. Several wrecked pods littered the ground surrounding the wheel's base, and the wheel itself was badly listing to one side, in danger of collapsing entirely.
"The London Eye," Garl announced, hovering at Griff's shoulder. "People would go into those pods, and then be lifted up, high enough to see the whole city. A tourist attraction."
"That's interesting and all," Griff answered, "but what about Hyde Park?"
"To our west," Kal answered, and immediately flashed up an objective marker onto their motion trackers, a long way off to the rough north west.
"Bit of a hike," Elena observed, "and no Sparrow link, obviously."
"Would you want to use a Sparrow in this place?" Logan replied, indicating along the road in front of them. The others turned to look.
The roads were practically rammed from side to side and front to back with dozens, perhaps even hundreds of rusted wrecks of cars and other vehicles, including several huge buses that comprised two separate levels. The tyres were rotted away or entirely flat and the bodywork of each vehicle was just a carpet of rust. And then there were the skeletons. There were thousands of them, some sprawled in the vehicles but many more just littered across every inch of the road and the pavements, or huddled into open doorways to shield themselves from whatever doom had been visited upon them. Logan looked around, taking in the skulls he could make out. Hundreds and hundreds of skulls, on this street alone, watching the interlopers with empty, accusing sockets.
"Just like on the Moon," Elena said quietly, though on the Moon the bones were of fellow Guardians. These belonged to everyday people, killed en mass as they sought to flee the evil unleashed in the wake of the Collapse. Even worse than when Logan had first been bought back by Kal, among a junkyard of rusted cars and bleached bone.
"Can't do anything for them," Logan sighed, pulling back the bolt of his rifle, making a noticeable sound which echoed down the street for several seconds. He was checking the windows and doorways for signs of any movement, and discerned none.
"Where's the welcoming committee?" Griff asked, clearly thinking the same as Logan. "I thought this city was meant to be crawling with Fallen?"
"Maybe they're further in," Elena suggested with a shrug of her finely-tailored shoulders. "Over time they ended up having to pull further and further back to consolidate their positions." She didn't sound convinced.
"Whatever, let's just move," Logan said in reply. "With any luck they'll stick their heads out and we can shoot a few off." He started to walk off straight ahead, threading through the rusted cars and stepping carefully around the scattered bones of London's long-dead residents. Elena and Griff followed him after a brief pause, not voicing their concerns any further.
Initially, they saw little save for row upon row of rusted cars and countless scattered bones, but after half an hour they were walking alongside a large open space to their right that could have once been a park, but was as grey and lifeless as everywhere else in the city, a dried-out basin that could have once been a lake dominating the centre stripe of the park.
"St James' Park," Kal responded, reappearing in a burst of light as if reading Elena's unspoken questions. "London has several such parks in it, presumably for recreation and other activities…but Hyde Park is the largest of these alone."
"Just curious," the Warlock asked, tightening the grip on her handcannon.
A short while later, they rounded the south west corner of the park and came onto a wide curve in the road which circled an impressive stone monument topped with a golden sculpture. Part of the monument pictured a distinguished-looking woman sitting on a throne. Elena walked right up to it and held out her hand, and then Scarlett was flitting around it, scanning away.
"Hmm…seems to be a dedication to a Queen…Victoria? Must have been one of this country's rulers a long, long time ago," Scarlett announced, scanning the golden part of the sculpture. Close by, Logan hopped up onto the roof of a nearby van, and pulled out his sniper rifle, using its scope as he played it through a slow three-sixty turn, checking for potential threats.
"So what's this?" Griff asked, turning to watch the huge stone building opposite the memorial, behind a set of heavy iron-barred gates. It was wide, the centre of its front face dominated by a wide balcony with thick pillars, and just inside of the entrance was a pair of guard huts. One side showed more fire damage from the same kind of impact that had flattened or severely damaged many other buildings they had seen earlier on.
"Buckingham Palace," Elena replied, without any input from her Ghost. "This was the home of the Royal Family for so long, and then when the Collapse came they were evacuated out to somewhere far north. Records for what ultimately happened to them are limited."
Logan ignored all of this as he panned his sniper scope to the north east, in the general direction of their destination. He saw little save for centuries-old devastation and decay, until he played across a strange, spherical construct that was undoubtedly Fallen in construction. He spied the tattered banners flying from the top, sky blue edged with red, and featuring a stylized image of a falcon diving to attack, talons outstretched.
"I'm seeing Fallen architecture out here," he called out. Griff's response was to turn and start to check the way they had just come in case of an ambush, and then to summon Garl out and open a comm link to the Vanguard.
"This is Onyx," he said. "We're on site and have confirmed evidence of Fallen presence, but no physical sign of any ground forces as of yet, and we're hoping it stays that way. This whole city is ruined."
"Yeah, London used to be such a nice place," Cayde replied smoothly, "until the Collapse came and then ten million people quickly became ten million corpses. And then the House of Falcons landed a Ketch on the south bank of the Thames and turned the rest of the city into their own personal scrapyard. There was plenty for them to strip clean."
"Not so much now," Ikora Ray chimed in on the same channel, "they must have picked it all clean by now, especially everything from Watson Cybernetics in particular. They had been working on a number of special projects including advanced cryogenics and AI development. So much valuable tech, lost like that."
"That is all in the past though," Zavala reckoned, "and there are more important things to worry about now. Onyx, proceed onwards, but keep your senses sharp. Contact us as soon as you find the source of that signal."
"Will do," Griff said, and the link was quickly cut, leaving Garl to flutter this way and that, its tiny beam scanning as it went.
"Come on, we should keep moving," announced Logan, dropping down from the wrecked car and walking off to the north east. "We've been out in the open for far too long anyway."
"Feeling paranoid?" asked Elena as she turned away from the palace gates.
"Just a little," Logan replied, dropping down from his perch and already walking on. "I've underestimated the Fallen too many times in the last, and I'm not about to underestimate them again. Come on."
For a while they moved on in relative silence, following what remained of the road signs towards Hyde Park, the distance markers on their motion trackers gradually clicking down as they went. Occasionally, one of them would stop to examine something of note, their Ghost whirring and clicking around as it scanned for relevant data to send back to the Tower.
"Hold on, got some Fallen caches here," Griff called at one point as he crouched by a large hole in the tarmacked road, a few hundred yards past from Buckingham Palace. The others came in close as Garl disappeared inside and began to click his light beam around, illuminating a series of rounded machines that could only be identified as Fallen tech. But all of them looked inert and cold.
"Hmmm," Garl announced as it turned back into Light and vanished, "these are definitely Fallen sensor banks, and I can identify several coded fragments identifying them as belonging to the House of Falcons, but these haven't been lit up two years at least."
"Peculiar," Elena said aloud, glancing around again. "There are definite signs of their being Fallen here at some point, but there's no sign of them right now. So where the hell did they go?"
"Sure we'll be finding out one way or another," Logan replied, sighing a little as he stood and scanned the horizon again. As ever, his keen instincts picked up nothing. No inevitable ambushes, no lingering Vandals with their stealth tech and drawn shock blades, no Shanks at low power waiting for some clumsy Guardian to set them off – nothing. Far as he was concerned, Old London was a dead city, but he didn't vocalise that to the others.
After a short while they reached what must have been the nearest corner of Hyde Park, but their path was blocked by a massive wall, some fifty feet high. It was steel grey, but made of something altogether more alien and much more durable. More Fallen tech was scattered at the base of the wall, forming some form of checkpoint, now long abandoned. Logan stood and looked both ways along the street they stood on, checking for an alternative route.
"Through here," said Elena, as if reading his mind, standing at a wide open entrance to an old building. The sign above the door read Hyde Park Corner, along with symbol depicting a red roundel shape, bisected horizontally across the middle with the word UNDERGROUND against a blue background.
"Underground?" asked Griff dubiously.
"An underground transit system," Scarlett announced as the tiny machine appeared out of nowhere, "much like the one on Mars, just on a much smaller scale. Back in the Golden Age and before, this system served the entire city. I got Elena out of the city through the tunnels, back when I first bought her back to life."
"Good to know," Logan nodded and then started to walk in through the open doors. "Come on, we've been out in the open long enough."
A couple minutes later, Logan didn't feel any safer down underground than he did up on the streets, in the open. For one, the skeletons were even thicker inside. There had to be the remains of thousands of individual bodies littering the tiled floors of the entrance ways, the steep descents into the station itself, and on the platform itself. The lights were off, so the three had to navigate by way of their Ghost's individual light beams, which made things a little difficult. Their boots waded through ankle-deep piles of bleached bones, scattering ribs and tiny finger bones like dice, and often crushing skulls with clumsy missteps. Griff must have flattened at least a dozen himself on their descent, each one being met with a dirty look from the others and a whispered apology.
Good job Griff, though Logan. Alert every damn Fallen down here. But nothing reacted to their advance.
Eventually they made it to the platform itself, littered with a thick carpet of bleached bones. Logan kicked a good amount away as he took a closer look at the ruined train parked at the station – all that remained was a badly rusted shell, the side walls slowly caving in. Griff was examining a large map stuck to the wall opposite the train. He wiped away a thick layer of dust and grime, exposing a largely white space, decorated with lines of various colours tracing this way and that, all marked with numerous names. It was a map of the underground, they realised after a few moments.
Garl was released to scan the map, his little beam illuminating the numerous names. "Elephant & Castle, Piccadilly Circus…what kind of names are these?"
"The human kind," retorted Elena from the opposite side of the platform. "And I wasn't thinking much about how silly the names sounded when I was running for my life two years ago."
A short distance away, Logan was poking through the ruined train, but there wasn't much to see save for more bleached and worn bones, scattered on the floors and seats. There were traces of seating and bright advertising above said seats, but it was impossible to discern any of what it was.
"Come on, we've wasted enough time," he announced with a glance over his shoulder as he walked out of the train and dropped onto the tracks. "Let's get a move on before the Fallen do crawl out of wherever the hell they're hiding." Without another word or protest, Elena and Griff dropped down onto the tracks and followed after him, the light beams of their Ghosts illuminating the rounded tunnel they followed. Warning signs illuminated as they bobbed along.
"There must be miles of these tunnels," Griff commented after a while.
"Two hundred and fifty, to be exact," chimed Garl, his voice projecting out from the face grill of his master's helmet. "Also, the trains which ran on these lines could reach up to 60 mph in top speed, although the average speed of most tube trains was only around 20.5"-
"No-one likes a know-it-all, Garl," Griff announced loudly, which shut up the Ghost and prompted a loud snigger from Elena.
"Come on children," said Logan, "let's all play nice until we get to the part where we shoot aliens in the face and collect our loot, shall we? Now Elena, any idea where we can come out closer to the park?"
"Well if my memory serves me correctly, if we keep going forward we'll come to a station called Marble Arch Corner, which takes us out at the park's North East corner," the Warlock answered, one arm extended as she consulted some data her Ghost had stored in its memory banks. "And the marker is nearer that corner anyway."
"Good job," Logan replied, and began to pick up the pace. "Come on, let's get a move on."
Ten minutes later they had reached the station, and they ascended up another set of dormant escalators littered with bones, emerging onto the street close to what was once a magnificent piece of architecture in white marble, except now it was half-collapsed. Something powerful had smashed into its top side, leaving its central arch collapsed, and also badly scorching the area around the collapse. Logan stood and stared at it for a while, marvelling at the design above the archways while Elena and Griff stood in a small huddle, looking in the direction of Hyde Park.
"OK, I definitely don't like this," the Titan announced.
"Which part?" Elena asked. "The part where a city that's been held by the Fallen for decades is just completely dead, or the part where this signal we're tracking has no encryption in it whatsoever?"
"…excuse me?" asked Griff, turning to look at her with the smooth visage of his plasteel helmet.
"This signal has no encryption to it," Elena replied levelly. "You would think that if the Cabal were here on Earth, so close to us, that they would want to remain undetected for the duration of their stay? And if that was the case, why would they be broadcasting a signal that we could so easily stumble across? I don't like this at all, Griff."
"Now that you mention it," Griff said, tightening the hold on his rifle, "this suddenly seems like a bad idea. Standing out here, in the open. Feels like we have targets painted onto our backs."
"Well in that case we should make this very quick," Logan added as he walked up. "The beacon's just over there if the tracker signal is anything to go by."
"You realise this could just be a massive trap set by the Fallen to draw us in and strip us to the bone?" Elena said.
"Of course," the Hunter shrugged, as though it was an obvious answer. "A Cabal signal, on a planet that we know they haven't reached, on a band we could easily pick up? Of course it's probably a trap. But it's been too long since a Guardian came to this city. I've always been curious about what state it was in, weren't you?"
"I think you and I have very different concepts of curiosity, Logan," Elena replied.
There must have been a fence around Hyde Park at some point, but it had been torn down a long time ago, leaving just a shallow trench that they easily stepped over. Inside, the park's grass had been dug up long ago, leaving scattered patches of wiry leaves of grass and weeds to dig their way up through packed soil. The rest of the space was littered with more Fallen architecture, indicating that this had once been one of their main bases. But like the outpost they had seen earlier, it had been abandoned at some point.
Griff called out when he came across a refuelling station for some Pikes, three of the heavy machines resting on the soil itself, their engines long dormant. The Titan forced up one of the engine panels, and saw the machinery inside had been picked clean at some point. "Looks like they got desperate enough to scavenge their own stuff," he said.
The others were looking elsewhere, and at one point Logan vaulted himself up to the top of a watchtower and pulled out his sniper rifle so scout ahead. He could see no signs of life as he played the clicking viewfinder back and forth through a wide arc, seeing nothing save for empty structures and tattered flags bearing the crest of the House of Falcons.
"The Fallen haven't been here for years," he announced as he grabbed hold of the ladder on the side of the tower and slid down to the ground in one fluid motion. "If they were waiting in ambush for us, then they've been waiting a very long time."
"I doubt patience is a virtue the Fallen hold," Elena retorted.
"What, they have virtues?" Griff asked, smirking beneath his helm.
"Noise discipline," hissed Logan as he crouched down in cover beside a particularly large sensor pod, and the other two quickly followed his example. "The Fallen might not be here anymore but something else just might."
"What? The Cabal?" asked Griff. "I haven't seen one of those for the last couple hours, and you can't exactly hide a Cabal in plain sight. You know they don't believe in that crap."
"Come on children, let's keep moving," sighed Logan, moving on as Kal flittered back and forth, scanning every kind of Fallen tech he could find, but most of the data banks were powered down and starting to become covered in moss and lichen. The little machine let out a sigh and moved on.
"Signal is dead ahead," Elena announced, checking her motion tracker.
"Time to see what all the fuss is about," Griff said, pulling back the bolt on his rifle and then running off to the right, threading in between two separate buildings so he could come at the objective from another direction from the others.
They could see it just ahead. There was a landing field for the Fallen's Skiffs, and a couple of the large vessels were docked, but they were as rusted and cold as the Pikes they had seen earlier. In the shadows of the leftmost one, there was a comms beacon set up, of the type used by the Fallen. It had a green light on top which was blinking on and off at a regular interval, and a long antenna array, jury-rigged from thin steel wire the Fallen had rigged from their scavenging efforts.
"It's just there?" whispered Elena to Logan, "out in the open? Could this be anymore of a trap?"
"No, it couldn't," Logan whispered back, glancing around until he saw the faint silhouette of Griff crouching fifty yards away. The Titan raised his arm in a subtle greeting, and then aimed down the sights of his rifle. "…but we have our mission. I'll go and check it out. Stay here Elena, keep an eye out."
"Sure."
Then Logan crouched down and lowered his head. A few seconds later, there was a very subtle shimmering of light, and then he just vanished into thin air. Except, there was the very slight shimmering in the air, to show his cloaked outline, and then Logan was rushing towards the beacon, leaving small traces of dust from his footsteps. A few tense seconds later, the Hunter reappeared crouched beside the beacon, knife in hand. With a bit of work, he levered his knife underneath the corner of the front body panel and popped it off, leaving the inner workings and a small black screen exposed. It was reeling off long lines of code in large white characters that Logan didn't recognise.
"Okay Kal," he whispered and extended his arm, bringing his Ghost into reality, "do your magic."
"With pleasure," the machine chimed, and then its little white beam was extended, scanning the beacon from side to side. On the dingy screen, the lines of code scrolled past at a faster rate. "Well, this is definitely a Cabal message: their codes are in here, as well as another message. One repeating over and over again."
"Distress call?" asked Logan, glancing over his shoulder.
"Possibly," Kal answered, "although you know for all of my sparkling wit, priceless advice and incredible code-breaking…I am not an alien linguist. The Cryptarch's back at the tower would know more."
"Well then extract it and let's get a move on"- Logan started to say, but then the screen in front of him shut up abruptly, the pale glow gone. The light on top flickered one more time and then went off.
"Uhhh…that was unexpected," Kal said.
"What, what is it?" asked Logan.
"The second I extracted a copy of that message, the whole system just shut down. Must have been a fail-safe," the Ghost explained as it looked round at its master, its eye-plates forming into a wide, surprised expression. "And not only that, it sent out a short-wave burst transmission to a nearby position."
"How close by?"
"…less than a hundred yards."
Oh boy.
"Logan!" Elena was screaming, just as he heard the high-pitched whistling, and he glanced up and past the beacon to see the projectiles coming in fast, trailing black smoke, and he was up and sprinting back towards Elena, and then at the last moment possible he jumped and hurled himself head-first as the missiles slammed into the beacon, tearing it apart in a conflagration of flame and shrapnel.
Logan hit the ground with his right shoulder hard, rolling over and tucking himself into a crouch, coming up with his rifle raised, the stock clamped tight against his shoulder. "You see where it came from?!" he bellowed out, the question directed at Griff and Elena together.
"North West!" cried Griff, already sighting his rifle in. "That was…that was a missile barrage from a Colossus!"
"It sure was," muttered Logan, as he heard the next inevitable sound that told him what they were facing: the whining of jump packs.
Sure enough, he saw six massive figures come cresting the top of the nearest Skiff, tearing through the black smoke from the ruined beacon, leaving swirls of embers and choking smoke in their wake. Each one was massive, at least eight hundred pounds of sheer muscle and armour that shielded a member of the most war-like and destructive race that the Guardians of the City had ever faced. Bellowing great cries, each one slammed into the ground with enough force to leave a shallow crater and then broke into long strides, firing off short, sharp bursts from their slug rifles.
From behind Logan, Elena opened her mouth and bellowed a single word.
"Cabal!"
A/N: So, here is the latest chapter, a little later than I would have liked to have put it up. But anyways, when writing this I was attempting to keep to the real-life layout of London, which I have visited a few times in the past so I was going off of Google Maps, so hopefully it is somewhat accurate. Anyways, as always R&R as usual people, and with any luck I can update a little faster next time.
