CHAPTER 4
DEEP SIX
NEW PACIFIC ARCOLOGY, TITAN
Drifter stepped onto his platform. On his left was team Alpha; John, Rian, Joseph, and Corrs. On his right was team Bravo; Gaston, Sherrik, Colin, and Gio.
He took a good look at each time and smiled before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his rectangular jade coin. He flicked it into the air with his thumb and it fell slowly.
"Alright alright alright," he said as it fell back down, "let's see what we got!"
The coin landed in his palm and he flipped it over. On it was the angular symbol of the Hive.
"Hive," he said, holding the coin out in his right hand, "bring a sword."
Each team readied their weapons as Drifter's Ghost prepared them for transmat.
"Welcome to Gambit," Drifter said, stepping forward and pointing to each team, "you ever seen a Hive eat? I'll tell you it's the nastiest thing I've ever seen. And you absolutely do not want to know what it is they eat," he said with a chuckle.
The transmat was locked.
"Transmat firing!" he shouted.
All four Guardians on each team disappeared and Drifter walked back behind him. There were two screens, one that showed each team. He pulled up a chair and sat down staring intently at each screen as every Guardian took part in one of his first ever games of Gambit.
Every Guardian in the match had their HUDs adjusted for Gambit. On the top of their HUD were two bars, showing how many motes each team had, and on the side of their HUDs showed how many motes they personally had.
John and his team were transmatted to a circular station on Titan known as Deep Six. The four ran forward, all together. A red diamond appeared over a section of the station, and next to the diamond said 'Command'.
"Hostiles incoming at Command," Drifter's voice sounded over communications.
The four Guardians entered the area listed as Command. It was an indoor section of the station that had two stories, and both stories were filled with Hive.
John and Rian went up and around to the second story while Joseph and the other Guardian were on the first.
Three groups of five Thrall turned to the two Warlocks when they came up to the door. A Wizard behind the Thrall stared at the two and snarled before raising its hands to attack. John raised his scout rifle at the Wizard and fired until he brought its shields down, all before the Wizard could attack him. Rian charged her fusion rifle and fired at the Thrall, killing them before they could even get close enough to hit anyone. Each burst took out three, and John finished the Wizard off with a headshot.
Once all of the Hive were killed, all that was left behind were small, glowing, white pyramids on the floor where each Hive had died. They fell out of every enemy that was killed. John walked over to one and it disappeared when his foot touched it. His body began to faintly glow white, and the counter on the side of his HUD displayed that he had one mote.
John and Rian ran all throughout the second story of Command, each picking up the motes that were dropped until both of them had eight.
"How much can we do with eight?" Rian asked.
"Small blocker," John responded.
"That's it?"
"Five motes is a small blocker, ten is a medium, and fifteen is a large."
"Right."
Joseph and the fourth Guardian finished off the Hive on the first story, and all four of them sprinted to the bank in the middle of the station. Joseph had ten motes and the other Guardian had five.
The second they stepped onto the platform, the cylindrical construct that was the bank locked and went down into the floor of the station. A black rift opened next to it and a Taken Goblin stepped out.
The black and white jittering Goblin started shooting at Joseph, and all four of them shot at the Goblin with everything they had, tearing it apart in mere seconds. Once the Goblin was killed, the bank rose opened back up.
Each Guardian stood by a port in the bank. They held out their hands and a mote appeared in each hand. The Guardians then shoved the mote into the bank, and it consumed all of the motes they had picked up.
"A whole ton'a blockers headed to the other side!" Drifter exclaimed over communications, "I can already see the chaos."
A ring behind the bank that had nothing in it before suddenly pulsed with energy, and the middle of the ring became filled with black and green Taken energy.
"Portal's up," Drifter added, "go say hello."
John looked at the other Guardians.
"I'll go in," John said.
The rest of the Guardians nodded and ran off to another part of the station called the 'Burrow'. John turned toward the portal and jumped into it. He was at the enemy's arena in an instant.
The enemy team's arena was exactly the same as his team's arena, but he didn't question how anything worked. The entirety of Gambit was strange enough to him as it is.
He saw the names of each enemy Guardian, and next to their names was how many motes they each had. He saw one with fifteen motes headed toward the bank.
"I don't think so," he said quietly to himself.
He pulled a sniper rifle off his back. The Guardian, another Warlock named Gaston, was only a few steps away from the bank when John squeezed the trigger. A bullet shot out of the rifle and went straight through Gaston's head, and his body fell next to the bank. He didn't get to bank any of his motes.
"One down!" Drifter exclaimed, "nice shot there brotha'."
The timer on his HUD showed that he still had 20 seconds, so he ran off to find the next enemy Guardian, one that had ten motes. They were hiding behind a crate in an area called the 'Rig', but he could just see the very top of their head. This one was named Sherrik, but he couldn't tell what class Sherrik was.
John didn't think about it much before shooting the rifle and hitting Sherrik straight through the skull.
"That's two," said Drifter.
He heard footsteps approaching behind him and immediately slung his sniper, pulling out his scout rifle. Once he saw his attacker he kicked them in the stomach, and shot them in the head three times.
"Bury another," Drifter said, "ten seconds left."
The last enemy Guardian was hiding on the far side of the station, so John couldn't take him out in time. He watched the bank while his timer counted down, and more and more blockers continued to appear around it. The bar on the top of his HUD showed that his team almost filled the bank, and the enemy only had seven motes.
Once the timer was up, John appeared back in his own team's arena. There was a red diamond over the Rig, similar with Command and the Burrow earlier, and his entire team was over there. A Knight and four Acolytes came out of a dark room to John's left, and he pulled a shotgun into his hands.
He squeezed the trigger and the Acolyte in front of him dissolved. The Knight turned towards him as the Acolytes retreated, and it fired a shot from its massive boomer. The blue screaming ball of death soared through the air and exploded behind John.
John held down the trigger and fired off three shots with the shotgun's rapid fire frame, and the Knight fell apart. Instead of dropping one mote, the Knight dropped three, leaving John with four. He then pursued the other Acolytes that got away.
The Acolytes didn't get far before they were put down, each with a single shotgun blast. Drifter entered his teams communications once more when John picked up the sixth mote.
"Hey!" he shouted, "your team's got enough to summon a Primeval! Get those motes to the bank."
All four of the Guardians immediately turned toward the bank and sprinted back to it. But before anyone had the chance to bank, four blockers showed up. Two large blockers, a medium blocker, and a small blocker. Two Taken Knights, a Taken Captain, and a Taken Goblin.
"Clear those blockers brotha'!" Drifter shouted over communications, "you can get that Primeval up!"
Joseph flew up to a ledge outside of the area with the bank and unslung a rocket launcher from his back He fired at one of the large blockers, but just before the rocket hit, the Goblin fired a beam from its eye and shielded the Knight from the rocket.
John heard Joseph curse and he found his own ledge. He pulled out his scout rifle and fired a few shots into the Goblin's head, killing it. The Goblin dissolved into a puddle of white and black goop that quickly evaporated.
Joseph nodded to John after the death of the Goblin, and fired another rocket at the Knight, only causing it to stumble, but also taking the shields of the Captain down. Rian flew over John, and finished off the Knight with a blast from her fusion rifle.
Two more Taken Goblins showed up next to the bank, and John saw that the enemy team was catching up. Suddenly his vision went red, and a timer appeared on the side of his HUD.
Gaston entered the other team's arena with the intent of revenge. John had put their team far behind, and Gaston decided it was time to return the favour.
He ran up to a crate, and saw all of their team focused on killing the blockers that had showed up in their arena.
He looked through the scope of his pulse rifle and found John, laying the crosshair over his head. He pulled the trigger, firing a burst directly into the side of John's head, but the burst didn't kill him. It only took his shields down. Then he lost sight of John when he went into cover.
Gaston cursed under his breath. He stood up only to be kicked onto the ground. He rolled over onto his back and looked up. The female Warlock, Rian, had the barrel of her fusion rifle in front of his face.
"Nuh-uh," she said quietly, he could hear the smirk in her voice.
The fusion rifle charged quickly and fired, dissolving his body into solar energy.
He was revived, and his body was brought back to his own team's arena. He threw his rifle onto the ground in rage.
"Damnit!" he shouted, "damnit, damnit, damnit!"
His friend, Sherrik, came up to him after collecting ten more motes.
"Come on man," Sherrik said, patting him on the back, "don't let him bother you. It's not like we're in a tournament or anything, or like this is the only match of Gambit that will ever be played."
"I know, that John guy just really pisses me off."
"We'll get him back. I promise."
Gaston nodded and went back to collecting motes.
John shot a small ball of void energy out of his hand, and it exploded on the Captain's back, killing it. The only blocker that remained was the last Knight, and Corrs took it down with a shot from her grenade launcher.
With the last blocker dead, the bank reopened, and all four Guardians ran up to it, all of them banking their motes at once.
Once they had all banked their motes, the bank closed. Multiple Taken rifts appeared, dropping more Taken into the arena, including two large wizards. John's HUD indicated them as Primeval Envoys.
Once all of the Taken had been deployed, another rift appeared above the bank, larger than the other rifts. And once the rift closed, it left a shadow cast over the four Guardians, who weren't prepared for the next fight.
HANGAR
THE TOWER, THE LAST CITY
"So you don't know where he is?" Jack asked Steven.
"No clue man," Steven spread his arms in a I don't know gesture.
Jack sat down across from where Cayde used to stand in the Tower's hangar. He had no idea where the man went, but he wanted to get some scout reports before went on patrol.
Jack stood up and turned around to leave the hangar after looking around for a bit for Cayde, and Steven followed him. As the two entered the courtyard they saw clusters of Guardians standing around. But something about them was amiss.
They all were wearing shades of brown and green. Some Warlocks had a symbol on their bonds, two green snakes intertwined. Some Hunters and Titans had the symbol on their cloaks and marks as well.
Out of the corner of Jack's eye he saw that Commander Zavala glanced at them, with a disgusted look on his face. Jack decided to go talk to Zavala.
"Hey Commander," Jack said on approach.
"Yes, Guardian?" Zavala asked, not turning around.
"What's, um, happening here?"
"I approved someone of coming to the Tower when I really shouldn't have," Zavala sighed, "his influence is spreading through the Guardians faster than I had expected. I honestly didn't know what to expect at all. And I don't know if I have the willpower to remove him from the Tower now."
"Who is he?"
"His name is the Drifter. Hardened after hundreds of years alive, mostly spent in the Dark Age, he says he is preparing Guardians for a second Collapse. I don't believe him, his way of preparing them seems more like a sport than it should be."
Zavala stared up at the Traveler that hung low in the night sky.
"Cayde says he believes him," Zavala said, "and as I much as I don't, I trust Cayde. Though that might be hard to believe."
"Speaking of Cayde," Jack said, "any idea where he went? I was gonna go on patrol and wanted to grab some scout reports."
"He's off on some job in the Reef. I don't know much about this 'job' but apparently it's important."
"Guess I'll just wait then."
Jack slowly stepped away from Zavala. The Awoken Titan still didn't turn around. As Jack walked away from Zavala, he bumped into Steven, who wasn't paying attention.
"Watch we're you're walking man," Steven said.
"Sorry," Jack replied.
"So what's up?"
"Apparently there's some shady guy in the Tower trying to get Guardians ready for a second Collapse."
"Is that not a good thing?"
"Zavala thinks he's up to no good."
"Maybe we should talk to him to see what's up."
"No. That's what he wants to happen. Next thing is we're gonna get hooked and fall to the Darkness or something."
Steven looked at Jack and burst out laughing.
"Fall to the Darkness?" Steven asked when he collected himself.
"I don't know," Jack responded, "I just don't think that talking to him is a good idea."
"Right. So what are we supposed to do?"
"Uh. Crucible?"
"I'm down."
"Then let's go."