"Does it ever stop itching?" Kenta asks me, scratching at her forearm through her fatigues. We patrol the camp, making sure everything is in order and nothing gets inside. Our patrols have doubled in the days since we lost The Colonel.
"You get used to it," I tell her, "and the scratching helps get some of the old skin off."
She makes a sound of disgust. I can't see her expression under the blank Eternal mask we both wear. Only our eyes shine out. Kenta takes the laser rifle off her belt, using its weight as a distraction. She still needs an O2 Kit, her condition not as progressed as mine or the others.
Not much has passed through Vorago Solitude since we set up camp. Occasionally one of the camps on the perimeter has to deal with the agitated locals, and sometimes the wildlife of Triton Flats will float its way to us, but other than that we've seen little action. It reminds me too much of our four-year vigil down in that pit. Except now I can see the stars, planets, and ships crossing above. It doesn't feel like as much of a change as I expected.
We pass under the catwalk connecting our camp to the dig site just before the vault. Boxer, leaning on the rails above, waves down at me as I pass by. I reciprocate.
The downtime has provided more opportunities for our camp to become a community, in a strange, desperate sense. It's easier to get to know everyone up here when we're all crammed together. I know everyone in my small camp by name. We share stories, eat our meals together, and all share the weight of protecting the universe from certain doom.
Boxer and I have more time together. I'm surprised after over four years of being in his way that he hasn't grown tired of me. And it seems I am always learning new things about him. He hums folk songs from Eden-6 while he works and hates it when I try to get him to sing the words for me. He snores despite his attempts to stop by sleeping on his stomach. Sometimes I catch him in deep thought, glaring off into middle distance, eyes sharp as if he's trying to extract meaning from the very space around him.
I am, evidently, not the most covert in my observing. I learned this when he outright confronted me about it, asking why I was watching him all the time instead of "doing my job" (my job being the useless task of patrolling the camp). That day I had to admit to him that I had trouble not thinking about or looking at him. This information he found incredibly amusing and, as he said himself, "really cute."
"You aren't doing anything later, are you?" Kenta asks abruptly.
"Oh," I bite my lip, "I might have to check my calendar. Wouldn't want to miss out on sitting on my hands. I also have an appointment with the gate—I have to stare at it for a few hours." Kenta snorts. "Of course I'm not doing anything, what are you planning?"
"Some of the scouts and I are going to Tara's tent. She's organizing Artemis Hold 'Em, and I am going to win that statue from her."
Tara's tent is right by the eridian summoning stones. I wonder what they think of us, laughing and drinking and bickering into the night.
"The Hyperion hood ornament?" I laugh, thinking of the hand-sized metal statuette Tara shows off relentlessly.
"Who cares if it's a hood ornament? It looks valuable. I'm thinking I could melt it down and pawn off the bars, send the money to my folks on Hestias."
Hestias, like Promethea, is a planet ravaged by war. I wonder if she joined Dahl for the same reason I did, for the promise of a better life. Money to pay off debts and get off the stupid planet.
Kenta continues, "Pittman said he'd come by, but he hasn't answered his ECHO in, like, an hour."
"Aw, I miss the old man." He's a lieutenant colonel, three years past his promised retirement. He guards the Triton Flats connector but occasionally takes a moon buggy down to us. He'll groan about his bad legs and crow about the glory days during the Dahl corporate wars, when he was mowing down Atlas soldiers and not sitting on some moon waiting to die. He destroys all of us at poker. I lost three pistols and a legendary grenade mod to him.
"Right? I might have to get a Stingray and grab him."
"Not a Stingray," I laugh, "you'll kill him on that jumpy thing."
Kenta laughs with me, and for a moment I wish this war filibusters into oblivion so that I might stay at this camp with these people. We can play poker, laugh, sing, and tell stories. We can exist freely here as Eternals, away from the questioning and antagonistic eyes of the rest of the galaxy.
She wipes a tear from under the mask, telling me about the time that she fell off a Stingray at a jump, falling into a canyon of lava. It nearly ate through her entire shield before help arrived. She pauses in the middle of relaying to me the dumbfounded look on her commanding officer's face when he found Kenta standing in the middle of a sea of lava. Her head twitches to the side. "You hear that?"
I hold my breath as the air buzzes with a mechanical whirring. Then I see it.
A flash of red zips by, tearing off the top of Kenta's head. The drone flashes past, firing more machine gun rounds. Hitting my armor, kicking up dirt. As I bolt back to the camp, I hear them laughing and shouting at me. The vault hunters have arrived.
I race through the camp, shouting warnings. Behind me, the six of them open fire. Two extra jeering voices are added to the chaos as the clones are activated. My blood is cold, lungs hot, limbs heavy. They killed The Colonel. They killed Bob. They're here to kill us.
A fusillade of bullets hails at me. One tears past the lightweight armor on my leg, through my calf. The flesh hisses, sizzling. Corrosion. I stumble behind a tent. It buckles inward as one of them fires a rocket into it. Flesh cooks under the heat of the projectile. They were sleeping.
I drag my busted leg behind tents, shoulder pressed to the wall of the Outfall Pumping Station for support. The pain makes my brain slow. My joints lock up from the shock. The vault whispers distantly to me. If I don't ascend soon, I'm meat. Already I hear some of the others taking to the sky. Weapons are primed, orders shouted. It's all in vain. They're eating us alive.
"Six!" One of them cries, by the accent, I'm guessing it's The Baroness. "Do keep up, Wilhelm. You're lagging."
A synthesized voice grunts. "I'm not doing shit."
"Clearly." Another one drawls, followed by the boom of a Jakobs shotgun. "I've got five. Best that, big man."
"You're only doing this to impress the boss."
"So?" A hail of laughter. "Afraid of a little competition?"
My legs are shaking so much it's a miracle I'm even standing. I can see my tent ahead. Just a few more steps. The vault hunters continue to joke and jeer like this is just another job for them. Maybe it is.
Boxer bursts through the tent, Corena in tow. They notice me barely holding myself up. I'm dragging something behind, can't tell if it even looks like a foot anymore. Boxer and Corena run to me, but their attention is with our falling camp.
"Got three here," that mechanized voice again. I turn to see Wilhelm, crouched on one knee, drones on cooldown, a rocket launcher over his shoulder.
"Doesn't count if they're still alive, tin can!" Nisha Kadam shouts back. Wilhelm just raises the launcher and grins.
I am pulled off my feet. Energy swells in my chest and I look to the stars, my pain forgotten. Ancient power races through my bones, rattling my teeth, squeezing to get past my eyes. It echoes in my lungs, boiling the marrow of my bones, tightening my tendons, pulling my veins taut.
I fall, but my feet do not find the ground.
A sphere of crackling electricity surrounds me, keeping me aloft. I am the storm. The Enforcer was unfortunate enough to be in my field. He takes off in the other direction, shield fried.
Corena and Boxer managed to jump away just in time. Boxer stares up at me like I will fall apart. I might. I know what the vault wants from me. It pumps through my veins. It wants me to fight, to protect. But I do not. Corena shares a few words with Boxer that I can't hear over the sizzling of my energy field. She enters the fray. Boxer gives me a parting glance that says too much before reluctantly following her, powering up his Res-Gun. This must be how he feels. Caught between what everyone wants him to do and what he must to keep us alive. I'm dragged back into the battle when a bullet screams past my head.
"Uh, that was a . . . warning shot!" The Baroness is perched on the top of a Legion structure, picking us off. I duck out of the way before she can get another shot at me. Nearby, I hear the return fire of a Dahl sniper.
We're spread thin. Our camp is smaller than it once was—a handful of people up and left upon hearing of The Colonel's death. We're low on guns, manpower, and directive. The vault hunters make easy work of us. They command the battlefield like it was constructed around them. Even the little CL4P-TP unit is helping. I watch helplessly as the steward robot puts my peers into the ground with fire from an automatic weapon as big as him.
Tara stands outside her tent, geared up inside a shield bubble. She exchanges fire with the body double. He digistructs his clones and scurries off to attack the opposite tent. The clones deplete the shield. A shot from one of them and Tara pitches back, legs folding under her as she collapses into the tent. A righteous rage fills me and I chase the body double. The energy field kicks up small rocks and debris around me as I tear across the camp.
I pass Corena, still exchanging fire with the Baroness. She nods at me, fires the Pitchfork, and I hear a drone as the Baroness loses her shield. She ducks behind cover before Corena can finish the job.
It is now that I notice movement by the archway. I throw a glance over my head to find a growing horde of Hyperion loader bots entering the fray. They carry guns and deadpan orders to each other. They're weak, made for maintenance, augmented for war. The marines tear them down faster than they can enter. I push on.
Athena, the ex-Atlas assassin, fights alongside the body double. Around the two is a corona of death, weapons, and bullet holes. They stand under the catwalk. Athena twists, glowing shield blocking gunfire on one side. She spears an Eternal straight through with her sword, cutting them from the sternum down. Droplets of blood float slowly to the ground in the lackadaisical gravity.
Boxer kneels behind a cargo crate, sidearm in hand, Res-Gun on his belt. He fires at the body double, who grunts and fades into a flash of light. One of the clones. He curses and ducks down to reload. Athena sees this and charges him, shield arm winding back to throw it at first sight of him. I breeze past the crates, summoning what strength I have to keep going. Athena sees me and doubles back, catlike reflexes keeping her balanced and aware of her surroundings. But with marines firing into her on one side and me on the other, she has nowhere to run.
I move toward her, feeling the mighty wrath of a long-buried civilization in my bones. She looks past me and smiles.
"You might want to turn around," She offers smugly. I do.
It's Wilhelm. He winks at me and fires his launcher. The massive projectile takes me back, shield whining as it depletes. I'm flung across the camp. The energy around me flickers and dies as I tumble across the packed dirt. I come to rest beneath the gate at the front of the camp. Limbs numb, something surely broken. The vault's power has left. In its wake grows an infinitely heavy emptiness.
To my right, the entire moon stretches out to the horizon. To my left, the vault hunters grow nearer to the vault. We were the last defense before the fissure. They tore us down and they're going to open the vault. Fighter jets rip above, searing over the moon's surface. A desperate play by Avett to keep them out. I've seen what the vault hunters are capable of. Our jets won't stop them. Not even RK-5 and our best fighter pilot. They'll liquefy the ship before it can get a single volley off.
Boxer and Corena scramble to my aid. Boxer slides the mask off my face. It bumps against a bruise on my cheekbone. He's kneeled over me, fear of death in his eyes. I pull my arm up to grip his, to assure him I'm okay. A relieved smile splits his face while the Res-Gun works on my flesh wounds.
Corena kneels off to the side, drawing her gun up. She levels the Pitchfork at their heads. They wouldn't notice, their backs to us, thinking me dead.
I grab the barrel, pull it down. Corena stares at me. One of her goggles was shot off. The edges jagged, one eye exposed, blood dotting her brow bone.
"We can leave," I spit between shaking lips. She looks to the rest of Vorago Solitude. "If you shoot . . . they will kill us."
Corena glares at the vault hunters, harboring weeks of festering rage following Best's death. She lets it go, hands dropping from the gun. "Yeah," She says wearily, "let's get out of here."