Chapter 38
Garden of Minos
They woke the next morning and checked to see how well everyone had acclimated overnight. In the hours that they'd been there, all of them had become able to move around considerably better, though they were still a bit sluggish. They wouldn't be able to dodge as well as they normally could, but they could move around without exhausting themselves in minutes.
Gaige had actually been surprised by how fast they had gotten used to the change in gravity and wondered if she shouldn't give them a bit more time, but everyone had decided that they couldn't leave those back at the Den of Bears at the mercy of the bandits for any longer, especially since they could move around now. Gaige had tried to argue for another day, that if they'd improved by this much in that short a time, then they should be even better tomorrow, but no one was willing to wait that long, they had gained confidence from the fact they could move.
Unable to delay any longer, they set about heading through the clouds.
The first thing they were going to do was to lower a cable through and have someone climb down, only for Deathtrap to shake his head and fly down cautiously.
He popped back up a minute later and informed them that it wasn't all that far down actually, though they would still need to use cables to rappel down, since it was about as far as the space between ships and with the increase in gravity, someone was liable to get hurt if they just dropped, especially since they couldn't see the ground coming.
"Alright." Gaige announced "Me and Artemis, will be joining Deathtrap in going down first. Shut up with that complainin, we're the only ones here that've faced Guardians before, so we're goin down and scouting it out, once we know what's down there, we'll call for the rest of you, come down as fast as is safe, but be prepared for a fight once you get down there. Electric weapons are your friend against these things, so those who're equipped with them come first. I leave the exact order to Istivan, he's in charge up here as soon as I'm gone."
With that they grabbed onto the cables and dropped over the edge. They followed Deathtrap down and soon could only tell where they were by the glow coming off of him. They slid through the clouds, quickly losing all sense of speed and place till neither of them could tell how long they'd been traveling, when suddenly Deathtrap stopped and they burst through the cloud layer to find the ground rushing up at them. Quickly slowing themselves, they continued the last little ways while scanning around them to both orientate themselves, as well as look for enemies.
What they found was a small planetoid, larger than any of the ships above, but nowhere near as large as any planet either of them had been on. It was small, though they had expected that, but it was still large enough that it would take at least a day to walk around it, even under the most optimal circumstances. The dark rock that made up everything in sight continued unbroken for as far as they could see, marred with valleys and occasional arches, but was the same monotonous color, a dark smooth grey that seemed to have been cut and formed for some purpose. They could make out lines marking the surfaces of the stone and everything seemed to be cut at regular angles, including the steep sided valley they were descending into.
The instant their feet hit the ground, they freed themselves from the cables and brought their guns up, clearing the area.
Finding nothing, they didn't relax, but as Gaige looked around, she spotted a strange, slightly unpleasant look on the other girls face and had to whisper to her "What? Somethings bugging you, so what is it?"
"You called me Artemis."
"Um, yeah? Am I not allowed to anymore?"
"It's a nickname, and I thought that was for someone you liked so I just thought you wouldn't wanna call me that anymore."
"Are you being serious right now? Why would you think that I hate you?"
"Cause you told me you do."
"I also told you I was sorry about that."
"Yeah, so which should I believe?"
"Urrg." Gaige growled wanting to pull her hair out and scream, but restrained herself given their present situation "Believe that I'm sorry. Seriously, why are we still talking about this, I thought that I'd made it clear that I didn't feel that way about you, and that I was sorry that I ever said those awful things."
"..."
"Say something."
"Incoming." With that the other girl turned and brought up her Maliwan SMG, an older model that only had one firing mode. Since she'd lost her electo-caustic to make the upgrade to Deathtrap's laser, she was forced to carry two to get the same elements, her older electric and a newer caustic-cryo, though she wasn't fond of the alternate fire for that one.
Gaige shelved the conversation and joined her, bringing up her own SMG, also a Maliwan, though hers was newer and had fire as it's alternate mode and aimed it down the valley at the bend a ways off.
It didn't take long for the first Guardian to come loping around the bend, covering the ground in great bounding leaps. Immediately after it came a dozen more, some of which ran across the ground on all fours like the first one, others marching forward, rifles at the ready, and one even seemed to flicker forward, leaving after images.
Gaige waited as they closed the distance, glancing around to try and find cover, but the empty valley provided none. She tightened her grip and double checked to make sure that her gun was glowing blue as she pulsed the trigger, letting the gun charge up and letting off just before it fired.
Next to her, Artemis slowly let out a breath and fired, even though they were a bit far away for Gaige's taste. She wasn't surprised when the shots tore into the first of the gun wielding Guardians, quickly shredding it. The rest brought their rifles up and started firing with their usual accuracy, making Gaige once again wish she'd thought to drop a crate before rappelling down, but since wishing wouldn't do anything at this point, she took aim and fired.
The Guardians quickly disintegrated under the stream of blue fire, but with how close they'd started, as well as their speed, it wasn't long before they got close, causing Jinx to have to roll to the side as one of the loping ones made a leap for her, claws out. It was met by a set of Digi-blades as Deathtrap intercepted it mid jump, slicing it clean in half. He finished the strike and unleashed a beam into the next one, eliminating it before it could even react.
Jinx finished her roll and popped up firing at the flickering one, but it just flickered a number of feet to the side and jumped at her, bringing the strange staff it was holding down, only to be hit in the back by Gaige's reflecting shots.
"Thanks."
"Meh, it's a start. Let's see how high I can get."
"Is that the Anarchy talking?"
"Maybe, oh wow, never seen that before." She said, spotting the red energy emerge from the ruined Guardian she'd just killed.
"Yeah, that's new." Artemis agreed even as she fired into the next leaping Guardian.
"Hey, I need these kills, stop hogging them."
"Fine, next time I'll just let them kill you."
Gaige looked over at her even as her reflecting shots took out the last of the Guardians.
"Huh, that's weird." Artemis said, drawing her attention back to the fight.
"What?"
"That red thing looked like it was trying to get into the one you just killed."
"You sure you weren't seeing things?"
"Yeah, I was seeing that red thing try and get into another one."
"Bitch."
"Back me up here."
"Urgurrr"
"Really? Alright then, I guess that's something we better watch out for."
"Seriously? You doubt me, but instantly take his word for it?"
"No, I believed you, I just wanted to make sure."
"Right. Anyway, we need to watch out for more of them, they'll know we're here now and I expect a larger attack very soon."
"Yeah." Gaige said with a nod before turning to Deathtrap "Babe, could you go up and get them coming, we'll hold the drop site."
"Urgur" He replied, flying straight up and quickly disappearing into the clouds.
As soon as he was out of sight, Artemis turned back and said "Oops, here comes the next wave."
Gaige turned and saw them rounding the corner from the opposite direction as the last group and just as she turned to face them, Artemis grumbled "No, I got those, you deal with the ones from the other side."
Gaige spun back and saw a dozen rounding the closer corner and swore as she pulled the trigger, sending a wave of blue energy flying.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Artemis switch to her sniper rifle and couldn't help saying "Really? You're gonna break that out already?"
"They're far enough away." Came the reply as she exhaled, followed immediately by the crack of the rifle.
Gaige didn't have time to see how she was doing since her hoard was quickly descending. As she slapped in a new clip and went back to work on them, she saw the red energy ball float into one of the Guardians and to her horror, it stiffened and changed.
"Uh, so, you were right, about that red thing, but it's, uh, worse than that."
"What d'ya mean?" Artemis replied, half turning and spotting the changed Guardian "And what's that?"
"That's what happens when it enters one of the shootie ones."
"Well, that's unpleasant. Excuse me for a second." She said as she spun around and drove a shot into its head, throwing it off its feet before turning back "There, dealt with."
"Uh, not quite." Gaige said as the red ball floated up again.
"Are you kidding me? Can't you just shoot it?"
"Nope, you know what my accuracy's like."
"Well then just kill them all before it gets a new, what d'ya call it? Host?"
"Easier said than done." Gaige said as she fired another clip into the oncoming mob. "Accuracy's overrated, but once in a while, it'd be nice."
"Fine then, you wanna switch?"
"Nah, I've got this."
"Then stop bitching and keep killing."
"Work work work." She grumbled while slapping another clip in. She'd been killing them as fast as she could, but with the seemingly endless stream coming around the corner, it felt like she was losing ground.
Just as she was about to shout up to see where the reinforcements were, she heard a thump next to her and another gun started firing.
"Holy...is this what's down here?" Alezander said from next to her.
"Less talking, more shooting boy." Karivona growled joining in.
"About damn time you got here." Gaige shouted at him "What took you guys so long? Too busy doing your hair?"
"What? It not like you didn't have situation well in hand." Karivona said "Still, this place, unexpected."
"Nah, this is fairly normal for Eridian stuff, wait'll you see the really weird shit."
"Promises, promises." Alezander said.
With the additional firepower they quickly pushed the attackers back, even as more troops arrived, making the job even easier. Before long they'd managed to make twin pushes till they took the corners and once they held them, the Bears started arriving.
Once everyone was down, and the Bears were positioned at the corners, the girls held a mini-meeting to discuss where to go.
"So which way?" Gaige asked.
"How would I know? I've never been here before, besides, don't you have more experience with these Eridian things anyway?" Jinx snapped back.
"Well, yeah, but I've never been here either."
"Then why'd you ask? Or was this just one of those 'opening a conversation' things?"
"Well, a bit of that, but I was thinking that maybe you saw something on the way down."
"Ah, sorry to disappoint, but all I saw was that the landing area was fairly open. You?"
"Same, dang it, well, I suppose we could just choose one direction and go in it, but I'm worried about the Bear's fuel supply."
"Hmm."
"What?"
"I think I've got an idea." She turned to where Deathtrap was hovering "Though I'll need to borrow him for a moment."
"Um, OK?"
"Hey buddy, can you give me a lift?"
Deathtrap flew over and cocked his head, trying to figure out what she was up to.
"Oh, I get it, here, take the scope."
"Doubt it'll be useful, I mean, we can practically see the horizon from here, but thanks."
She hopped onto Deathtrap's arm as he carefully held onto her and once she was secure, slowly flew upward till he was almost to the cloud-bank.
Jinx looked around, taking in the terrain and trying to find anything of note when behind her she heard Deathtrap's burbling "Urrur"
Turning to see what he was looking at, she spotted an army of Guardians rushing across the surface towards them. Letting out a curse she suddenly stopped and brought the scope up.
A moment later they rapidly descended and as soon as she was close enough, she hopped off.
"What is it?" Gaige whispered, picking up on the tension they had.
"Well, on the plus side, there is one spot that looked different. It's a bit that way," She said pointing to one of the walls "Seemed to be a clearing and around it the clouds were coming out of the ground."
"That's called fog, or mist."
"Not when they go up to make the clouds."
"You mean like atmospheric processing?"
"Uh, sure, we can call it that."
"Alright, it's at least something. So, what's the rest of it?"
"Well, first there's an army of Guardians coming this way from almost the same direction."
"Great, and second?"
"You know those flying things that Istivan mentioned? They were circling the clearing."
"Crap. You still wanna go?"
"Well, considering that I didn't see anything else, not really, but I don't think we have a choice, plus it might be better to fight the Guardians while we still have the Bears fueled up."
"You know, sometimes I hate it when you make sense. So which way should we go?"
"I just told you, that way."
"No you idiot, which way? I mean, which way does that end turn?"
"Idiot?"
"Sorry, I'm just getting thirsty and it's makin me cranky."
"So, take a drink."
"I would if I could."
"I've got a canteen right here."
"Not that kind of drink."
"Ah, sorry."
"I'm the one that should be sorry. But let's not get into that right now. What'd it look like down there? Or did you see a path while you were up there?"
"Sorry, we came down as soon as we spotted the Guardians, I only got a glimpse of the clearing through the scope, oh right, here it is, thanks for that." She said handing it back. "As for how my end of this path goes, it turns and goes that way for a short ways, then splits, going, uh, that and that way."
Gaige thought about it for a moment and nodded before standing up and walking over to where Karivona was.
After a brief update he nodded and turned to the rest of them, calling out "Listen up! We have direction, as well as incoming. Unfortunately, our path goes right through them, so prepare for a fight. Bears, you are to hold off for as long as they can, we need your firepower for what comes after Guardians. That does not mean you no can fight, by all means, fight, you are to be of no use if you get wrecked before you do anything, but try and hold back what you can. The rest of you, kill as fast as you see them. You fight together before, so don't get in each other's way, other than that, keep communicating and stay alive."
"What do you mean 'after the Guardians'?" One of them shouted.
Karivona turned to the girls, so Gaige stepped forward and said "You don't really think that they won't have some kinda big defense thing, do you? Of course they will, so be prepared for that, and before you ask, no, I don't know what it's gonna be like, it's different at each place."
"All right, you hear her, we move out in one minute." Karivona yelled.
It didn't even take that long for everyone to gather up and be ready to move, a nervous energy running through the group. At exactly one minute, Karivona signaled for them to move out. The girls took point, even though many of the expedition troops wanted to, and glanced around the corner before taking off sprinting. The troops followed along as fast as they were able while making as little sound as they could, but still more than Gaige liked. She glanced over at Artemis, again wondering both what was going through her head, and how she could move that fast and still make so little noise, she wished that not only could she move like that, but that they'd taken the time to teach the troops with them how to move like that as well, since they were making even more noise than Gaige.
Before she could wonder much more, they made the next corner, and then the next, always turning towards where the clearing was. It wasn't long before the first of the Guardians rounded ahead of them.
Gaige didn't hesitate and let off a short burst, watching as the shots creened off to the side, only to bounce and head straight into the Guardians, tearing them apart. Next to her, Artemis turned without slowing down and fired upwards, at the Guardians that were rushing along the top of the valley.
They hit the corner and had to slide to a halt, causing the rest of the troops to nearly crash into them. But no one yelled or asked why, cause they could all see exactly why they'd stopped. The valley ahead of them was stuffed with Guardians. From the hunched over melee ones, to the ones equipped with rifles. There were even a few of them flying overhead. At a quick glance, Gaige estimated them to number in the hundreds. She saw a few of the ones with staffs, and as if her spotting him was a cue, one of them lifted his and seemed to call for an attack, since the mob rushed forward in response.
To her relief, none of the troops behind her lamented the size of the attack, though she did hear a number of colorful ways to describe them.
Without hesitation, she opened fire, slicing her shots across the front rank of attackers. Almost simultaneously, the troops behind her opened up on them as well, but to her surprise, Artemis didn't, instead she dashed to the side, switching weapons to her sniper rifle as she went. Gaige watched as she laid against the wall and started taking careful shots, each one dropping one of the fliers.
Seeming to feel eyes on her, she yelled out, trying to be heard over the cacophony of gunfire "What? Everyone should aim at the herd, less chance of missing, I'll deal with the fliers, I'm better at it anyway."
Gaige couldn't find fault in her logic, especially as another one fell out of the air, so she finished reloading, and opened fire again.
As she did, she felt a hot bolt of energy from one of the Guardian's guns tear past her, nearly burning her arm before it slammed into the head of one of the troops, dropping him. He wasn't the first one down, and it seemed that some of the troops were dragging the wounded out of the way. Still there were too many of them, and without any cover, they wouldn't last long. Even as she thought that, she heard Artemis curse as a shot cracked her shield, hitting her in the thigh.
Unable to take any more, Gaige called out "Bears to the front!"
She didn't want to risk having her best weapons damaged, but the sheer number of attacks coming her way needed to be cut down somehow, so she needed to risk it.
Even as the troops cleared the way, and they stomped forward, Gaige felt another shot hit her, this one slicing through her arm, nearly causing her to drop her gun. Cursing she unloaded at them, mentally kicking herself for not thinking to bring any portable cover. It was at times like this that she missed having Axton around. Still, she had something better.
Deathtrap came flying in front of her, holding a piece of metal. Where he'd gotten it from, she didn't know, but he slammed it in front of her, cutting off the oncoming shots and unleashing an elecro-beam of his own, slicing through the oncoming ranks.
"Get your ass over here." She yelled to Artemis while unleashing another stream of shots over the new barricade. The other girl darted across the open space, limping slightly as the Bears rumbled forward.
"You alright?" She asked as the other girl dove behind the plate.
"I'll be fine, just caught me off guard is all." She said with questionable honesty "You?"
"Bout the same, nearly dropped my damn gun from though, shot hit me just wrong."
The other girl nodded in response before turning to Deathtrap and asking "So where'd you find this? And why'd you keep it to yourself for so long?"
"Urgrrrur"
"Ah, so that's where you were, was wondering about that."
"Look, as interesting as that is, you wanna get back to killing things." Gaige groused at her.
"Me? I already took care of the fliers, what've you been doing?"
"Taking care of all the rest. And you've got more to deal with." She pointed to the next wave of winged Guardians coming into sight.
"Jeez, give me a moment would you." Artemis grumbled as she shot the first one.
While she was doing that, the Bears rumbled past where they were, prompting Deathtrap to lift the chunk of ship plating that he'd liberated and started pushing it forward, keeping up with the lumbering mechs. Gaige hustled along with it, firing another clip into the seemingly endless mob ahead.
Slowly they pushed forward, mostly using the Bears as cover as the energy shots from the Guardian's weapons slammed into their armor. Gaige gave a silent thanks to Verichenko for adding another layer to the existing armor before sending them off. It meant that they used more fuel to move, but was allowing them to keep pressing forward under the hail of energy coming their way.
Once they got in range, two of the Bears fired off their energy weapons, causing large arcs of electricity to chain through the mob, tearing the Guardian's apart.
"Why didn't we use those earlier? If we had then Anatole might still be alive." She heard the cry from somewhere in the crowd.
"Because we have to wait for the right moment to use our resources." Alezander could be heard yelling back at him "Now keep shooting, or do you want to join him?"
What he didn't yell was that each shot from the electo weapon took not only a fair amount of fuel, but had a long charge-up time as well. Furthermore, it had a short range, only about the same as a flamethrower, so they had to get close to the Guardians before unleashing it. To make up for this, it was quite powerful, able to travel a fair distance by arcing from target to target, making it ideally suited to large crowds and quite wasteful against single targets or small groups.
Between the twin shots, the Bears had managed to clear out a good chunk of the Guardians, allowing for the rest of the troops to focus on the rest, eliminating them in short order.
"Do not let guard down." Karivona barked at the troops as they slumped down, savoring the victory "We in middle of enemy territory. We press on."
There was a general grumbling that came from the troops, which was cut off by Karivona glaring at them. Alezander walked over to him and after a whispered conversation he barked out "All who can continue, shall. Injured, get back to entry point and withdraw."
A number of the injured cried out in protest, claiming they could still fight. Alezander walked over and talked to them, assuring the more injured of them that they had to fall back, and the ones that were still willing to fight, but shouldn't, that they had to protect the others as they fell back, as well as help them up. This seemed to settle them down, although they were still unhappy with it, they quickly did as ordered.
As they were falling back, the rest of the group pushed forward, running into another wave of Guardians as they did. This group was smaller than the last, prompting a number of the expedition troops to call out that they must've beaten the majority of the Guardians, since their numbers were lessening, which caused Gaige to groan in frustration and even Karivona to smack one of them while barking at him about bad luck.
Whether it was cause of that or just bad timing, right then a wave even larger than the last group poured down over both sides of the valley, threatening to overwhelm them.
Caught in a three-way pincer, many of the troops were about to break when Artemis yelled at the nearest Bear to fire into them.
"But we hit own troops." Came the reply.
"Better to hit our own, then have them all die." Alec's voice boomed as she charged up her weapon. The other Bears quickly followed suit as Karivona yelled for the rest of them to hold the line and prepare to get hit with friendly fire.
The troops weren't happy about that, but each and every one of them understood why it was about to happen, so they braced for it. The moments it took for the weapons to charge were bloody, with many of them falling from the relentless onslaught from the Guardians, but the remaining troops held fast, working first to take out the close combat Guardians.
Finally, the Bears yelled out to get down and fired their weapons into the mass of enemies. The crackling wave of energy tore through them, doing even greater damage than the first time, mostly due to how tightly packed they were, but unlike the first time, a number of their own troops cried out as the electricity arced through them.
When the attack stopped, a good number of the attack force lay on the ground. Some of them groaned, others twitched slightly as the energy ran its course through them, others stared blankly with unseeing eyes as smoke rolled off of them.
Gaige hoped that Alec wouldn't feel too bad about having to give the order, but she'd done what she needed to and Gaige would remind her of that later, but for right now, there were still Guardians to deal with, so she resumed firing into the mass.
Minutes ticked by as they dumped rounds into the Guardians and eventually the tide slowed and stopped, leaving them all wrung out.
Troops quickly changed tact's and started giving first-aid to the fallen, saving the lives that they could. While they got to work, Artemis moved forward, scouting ahead a little way. Gaige watched her go, sending Deathtrap with her for protection and was secretly glad that the other girl wasn't there at the moment, she didn't think that the rest of the troops would be all that kind to her at the moment, considering that it was her idea that had killed their friends. That it had also saved their lives, she didn't think they'd care about at the moment, but she hoped they'd come around in time.
More than that, she worried that the other girl might be blaming herself for the deaths, or even blaming Gaige, since it was her that had gotten them stuck here in the first place. But when she returned a few minutes later, nothing seemed off about her, though Gaige wondered how well she could actually read the other girl. She'd always thought that she had been easy to read in the past, but lately, she wasn't so sure, especially since she'd found out how little she'd actually known about her.
"What'd you find?" Gaige asked, trying to ignore the looks coming from behind her.
"We're almost there. Had him carry me up a little to get a look and we've only got a few more turns."
"Good, see anything else?"
"Not really. There's a few more Guardians around, though they weren't headed this way. In fact, they seemed to be headed for the other side of the clearing. Speaking of which, no one was firing over here were they?"
"No, why?"
"Heard gunshots. I was sure they were coming from that way, but the echoes here are terrible."
"Better let Karivona know." She said, motioning for him to come over. When he did, she filled him in.
"Distressing." He said "Were they from team leaving, above clouds or something else?"
"No way to know at this point, but we should probably expect that we might not be alone down here."
"Who else would be here?"
"No idea. No one else should know about this, so I've got nothing."
"Well, we no find out here."
"Right, let's go. You ready?"
"Troops are ready."
They headed out and moved as quickly as they could down the channel, following Artemis's lead. Gaige trailed a little ways behind her, taking the second spot in their line with Deathtrap floating along next to her, still lugging his portable wall.
The first thing that she noticed was the increase in humidity. The other troops with them had been complaining about the dampness since they'd landed, but now even she was feeling it. Ahead of her, above the edges of the valley, she could see columns of clouds rising up and around her she could start to see droplets of condensation on the walls. As they proceeded onward, she started to see roughness in them as well, as if millennia of moisture had started to wear on them and buildup was forming here and there.
It wasn't long after that that the clearing came into sight.