"Good morning, Failsafe," said Ambrose.
"Greetings, Guardian!" said the super cheerful voice of the AI. She sounded like an overly-helpful telephone operator, except for when she switched personalities to her apathetic side. It was rumored that Failsafe had been alone in the wreckage of the Exodus Black for so many centuries, she had developed two personalities just to have someone to talk to.
Ambrose had flown out to the centaur Nessus and landed just beyond the wreckage of the Exodus Black, a colony ship that had crashed there during the collapse. The Vex had terraformed the planetoid, filling it with red-leafed trees and a nitrogen-rich atmosphere. They had killed the crew and passengers of the colony ship, leaving Failsafe alone for centuries, until she was rediscovered by Guardians.
Now Ambrose climbed up into the intact portion of ship where the AI was housed, along with thousands of data cubes.
"I'm Guardian Ambrose," he said, bowing awkwardly to the computer core in the far wall. "This is my Ghost, Peach. I've come to ask your assistance."
"My assistance?" Failsafe sounded flattered. "I will do my best to help you, Guardian Ambrose." Her personality flipped. "The way I helped my crew when they all died."
"That is …" Ambrose hesitated and cleared his throat. "Ah, most helpful. I'm looking for a dead Ghost."
"Forty-six Ghosts have died on Nessus," Failsafe said cheerfully. "One Ghost resurrected a Guardian from among my dead crew. But it has been two hundred twenty-one years and they have not returned."
This was more information than Ambrose wanted. He almost asked who the Guardian was, but checked himself. He was here to try to save Saint-14, not collect gossip. "The Ghost I'm looking for will have come out of a Vex gate about ten years ago. It may have been hunted by Axis Vex."
"Oh yes, I have a record of that Ghost," Failsafe said. "We communicated for a short time before the Vex caught him. His name was Geppetto." Her apathetic side came out. "But he's dead now."
"Where is he located?" Ambrose asked eagerly, leaning on the railing between the ship's flooring and the computer equipment.
"I will send you coordinates of his last known location," Failsafe said, cheerful once more. "However, he may have been carried elsewhere."
A flag appeared on the map in Ambrose's helmet HUD. "Thank you," the Hunter said. "Out of curiosity, what did the Ghost speak to you about?"
"Opening a gate so he might return to his Guardian," Failsafe said. Her voice flipped. "But he didn't make it."
"Right," Ambrose said, and left the ship.
Failsafe's flag was hard to locate. First, Ambrose wound up exploring an empty hillside. He and Peach couldn't find a trace of a Ghost anywhere. Then Failsafe said, "You are half a mile too high, Guardian Ambrose."
This meant hunting for miles to find a cave entrance that led in the right direction. Nessus was honeycombed with passages, rooms, and cave systems the Vex had constructed for their nameless calculations. Ambrose fought his way through several gangs of the robots.
"Why do you think they call them goblins?" he asked Peach, blasting one into vapor with his fusion rifle. "Seems like goblins should be small, hairy, green folks, not robots."
"Why do they call those things harpies?" Peach retorted, highlighting one. It was a flying robot with three segments, like a shamrock, that opened and closed as it blasted them with lasers.
"Maybe they're female and prey on men?" Ambrose laughed. "There's also hydras and Minotaurs. Who named them? Minotaurs look nothing like a man with a bull's head."
"Maybe before the Collapse, the first people to make contact had a lot of imagination," Peach suggested. "Vex are pretty frightening if you don't know them."
Ambrose made his way down a corridor that was half rough stone and half carved bricks held up by data lattice. "I'd say they're more frightening on acquaintance."
Failsafe's flag was nearby, but off at an angle. Ambrose explored up and down the corridor, trying to find a way to reach it. Finally he found an alcove in the wall with a crack in it. He slid through this crack and found himself in a narrow avenue where the terraforming hadn't lined up correctly. Perhaps an earthquake had misaligned it. Bent double, the Hunter picked his way through the narrow passage, then had to climb up huge bricks like stair steps.
After what felt like miles, his back aching, Ambrose rounded a corner and entered a little subterranean room held up by data lattice pillars. He didn't need Failsafe's flag to find the dead Ghost.
Like his Guardian, the Ghost had gone down fighting. He appeared to have transmatted Vex goblins through the walls and floor, because bits of them protruded from the stone everywhere. Several more goblins lay dead in a tangle where he had fused their parts together. But a goblin clutched the Ghost in a clawed hand, one finger pierced through the little glass eye.
Ambrose knelt and tugged the cold metal spike out of the Ghost's eye. Then he pulled the Ghost away from the goblin. He held it up for Peach to examine. "Is this Geppetto?"
"Yes it is," she said sadly, playing a scan beam over him. "He has a short message here. Bury me with my Guardian, Saint-14. Glory to the Light."
Ambrose tucked the courageous little corpse into an empty ammo pouch at his belt. Sadness warred with hope inside him. Could it be possible to travel back and rescue Saint-14 before this happened? Before this Ghost fought its enemies to the death?
"If I stop this Ghost from dying in the past," he said aloud, "then how am I able to find it now?"
Failsafe had been eavesdropping. She replied, "Alternate timelines, Guardian Ambrose. You would move to an alternate timeline where the Ghost lived. If you do, please do not forget me."
Ambrose grinned. "I could never forget you, Failsafe."