AN: Whew, round two of writing a Destiny/Gate crossover. It's important to note that Para Bellum will be completely separate from Touched by the Darkness. I may reuse the names of some of the Ghosts, but don't expect the OCs there to make an appearance here.
Please leave your thoughts in the reviews, especially if you catch any errors within the lore that wasn't clarified in the post-chapter author's notes.
Yōji Itami and his squad are set to make an appearance some time in this story as side characters.
I hope you enjoy!
Chapter 1: "In The Depths of Ginza"
— EVELYN HAWKINS —
Tokyo, Old Japan
August 13, 2947 (11:41)
.
It had been seven days since she stepped foot in the literal concrete jungle of Tokyo. The cracked skeletons of Golden Age skyscrapers broke through the highest clouds and yet still rose higher than the eye can see. There was so much overgrowth that small plazas became grass forests and moss and vines downright made their own walls. But it wasn't just nature who reclaimed this city. Hive infestations plagued every street corner while a company of Red Legion soldiers built a fort right in the middle of a monstrous crater where the old Ginza District used to be. They called it 'Firebase Cognitionis.'
She felt some kind of respect for the Cabal ever since she found them holding out in the Dreadnaught. They sure had a knack of finding themselves deep in Hive territory.
Back when the Red War just started, the Cabal and the Hive had their own little war right here in Tokyo—fire and explosives flew left and right all over the city at any given time. But heavy artillery beats swords and magic any day. Even though the Hive held out longer than the Last City's Guardians when they lost their Light, Tokyo eventually fell to the Red Legion's control and the remaining Hive were driven into hiding.
Since then, the Vanguard treated the Cabal like the eerie tarantula in the back corner—as much as the Vanguard wants to get rid of them, the Cabal did keep the Hive insects in check. In turn, the Hidden played games of espionage against the Red Legion to keep them from becoming too strong by themselves. After the Red War, Guardians maintained a tight hold on the coasts of Japan to keep the Red Legion from proliferating beyond its borders.
This mission's active Guardian was Hunter Evelyn Hawkins, known to everyone as Evie. She was a Hidden operative from its Combat Surveillance Group; in other words, she directly acts upon information uncovered by Hidden intelligence agents that regular Guardian fireteams are not authorized to act on. The operation wasn't terribly difficult, but it was perfect for her skillset. She was to assassinate a Red Legion Psion Flayer suspected to be tampering with Hive ritualistic technology deep underground. They were frustratingly slippery, though—it was as if the needle in the haystack was actively trying to get away from her.
Armed with her trusty sniper rifle, Bite of the Fox, for long-range targeting, Trinity Ghoul for silent ranged attacks, and the Midnight Coup hand cannon for when things get up close and personal, she was ready for virtually any engagement.
She staked them out for seven days deep in Cabal country. Six of those days, she smelled like Hive shit and six straight nights were spent awake and on the move. But such was the life of any veteran Hunter, not just Evie.
Her lucky break came when satellites confirmed that her target is now inside that base. She sat two miles north and sixty stories up in a high-rise, watching Firebase Cognitionis and its occupants through a heavily-magnified scope of her rifle. A couple of well-placed shots right through that Flayer's head should do the trick. All she had to do now was just wait a little longer for that giant Psion to rear its ugly head.
"Hawkins, this is Watcher." A male voice came alive on her radio. "Be advised, we've lost visual contact with the Flayer; it went underground."
Evie sighed.
Just what I fucking needed.
After removing her helmet, her brown hair fell down to her shoulder blades. "Watcher, Hawkins. Crystal. Keep in touch when it shows up."
She was first resurrected only right before the Battle of Twilight Gap, but she quickly became a master Hunter in every sense of the word. Meaning, this was nowhere near her longest hunt and certainly far from the worst conditions. But a Hunter isn't always patient the same way Titans aren't always as disciplined as a rock. Evie was restless. For a while, she'd been wanting something more... something to get the blood pumping.
Her aim swayed as the building around her rumbled, but her balance remained steady.
Strange… that was the third earthquake this week.
"Watcher, can you check the seismic activity in the area? I know earthquakes aren't this common."
"Standby." The Guardian in her radio responded.
…
The building rumbled once more, this time much stronger and sharply breaking her stasis.
Evie felt a bit uneasy but largely wrote it off. "Seraph, are we safe here?"
Her Ghost materialized beside her and scanned multiple structural supports throughout the building.
"Nothing wrong with the structure—it'll hold up. Getting acrophobic, Evie?" Seraph took a jab at her.
She chuckled at the thought of it. "I've conquered enough acrophobia for a thousand lifetimes, 'Raph."
The mission's supervisor spoke through the radio.
"All seismic activity is purely artificial and is originating half a mile under Firebase Cognitionis, likely caused by Red Legion experimentation on Hive technology. Hold on… we're picking something up on the radar."
Evie raised an eyebrow at the warning. "What's up?"
As she readjusted herself, she thought she heard a very faint high-pitched noise gradually crescendoing around her.
...
"A Harvester just entered Tokyo's airspace and is making an unscheduled arrival to Firebase Cognitionis. Do you have eyes on?" Watcher ended the silence.
She looked up at the sky to find the large transport ship flying down towards the base. While her rifle was still trained at the base's entrance, she put on her helmet and watched the Harvester through her magnification lens as it landed.
Earlier, she'd been asking for something different. Fate seemed to have answered her call.
She observed the Harvester's ramp as it lowered and released its occupants. "A second Flayer accompanied by a platoon of Gladiators came out of that Harvester. This one's wearing a purple banner."
"We see it, Hawkins. Standby."
Evie kept observing the new Cabal platoon with her rifle. She held her fire even as they disappeared behind the FOB's large gate.
"Operation Prudent Execution just got reclassified to Class One Reconnaissance. Orders straight from Ikora Rey."
Evie felt a slight pang of excitement run through her body.
"If you're still able, then your new primary objective is to infiltrate Firebase Cognitionis and discover what the Flayers are up to."
She had already reconditioned her Light to utilize void energy as soon as she heard 'infiltrate.' She mag-locked her rifle to her back and stood up. "Is the mission still a go for neutralizing the targets?"
"Depends on what they're doing; the Vanguard will be the judge of that. Be advised, the Red Legion is watching the crater's hemisphere like hawks—even if you're invisible, they'll catch you on the scanners. Your best bet is in Sector B6; there's an underground exit meant for Legion excursions. It only opens twice a day and if our predictions are correct, it'll open again in two hours. That'll be your way in."
Her HUD already displayed the safest and quickest route to her destination. Over rooftops and through office floors.
"Copy that, Watcher. I'm en route. Hawkins out."
Sector B6 Legion Excursion Exit, Tokyo
13:39
.
Evie arrived earlier than usual—she avoided fighting any Hive or Cabal that she saw and stuck to the rooftops and the upper floors of skyscrapers. But she did take a very brief break when she submerged herself in a freshwater reservoir to clean up all the grime she's built up over the week. Her smell alone would've alerted everyone to her presence.
When she got there, she came upon the immense vault that was attached to the side of a tall hill—it was big enough to fit a Goliath. If there was a way to force the door open without pummeling it and alerting everything in the base to her presence, then she would've already done it. It didn't help that the tremors got more frequent and stronger as time passed.
She wasn't afraid of the earthquakes, but she was anxious about whatever the Cabal were doing down there that needed the use of Psion Flayers.
…
Watcher's predictions were correct, almost to the minute. The heavy metallic locks on the vault disengaged with a loud hiss before it swung upwards, revealing a small platoon of legionaries, gladiators, two centurions, and one manned interceptor. Whatever pissed them off was about to get hammered—and Evie wasn't about to try and challenge them right now.
She focused every bit of her Light into the void and called upon the Way of the Wraith. With her Spectral Blades in hand, her body vanished and strolled right past the Cabal into the tunnel as they marched outside. With the loud hiss of hydraulics, the vault slowly sealed the opening behind her.
"Watcher, I'm heading inside the base now." She reported.
"Copy, Hawkins. Install radio repeaters every hundred yards to maintain contact."
"See you on the other side. Out."
With that, Evie continued down into the depths of the tunnel as Seraph scanned their surroundings. Soon, he was able to create a rough map of the firebase. All they had to do now was follow the signs and the paths: whether it was the traffic of excavation machinery or the rumbling.
Still, Seraph couldn't help but be amazed by these tunnels alone.
"Wow…"
Evie pried open a vent with her knife. It'll allow her to bypass the majority of Cabal security.
"What's up?" She asked.
"To think that the Red Legion built this entire tunnel system in less than two months… even the Iron Lords would be impressed."
"Do you think they built it here on purpose?" She asked as she crawled through the ventilation shaft.
"There are too many coincidences for this to be accidental. They blasted a crater directly over the heart of a Hive fortress. And of all places, there aren't any strategic advantages of setting up camp in the middle of Tokyo. Mount Fuji would've been much more defensible and rich with resources, not to mention easy to project power."
"So they're only here to study the Hive?"
"That's the hypothesis. The Dreadnaught is too dangerous with all the Taken and there are too many Guardians at any one time on Luna. Watcher, any input?"
"Negative, Ghost. That's above our pay grade." Watcher said.
Evie sighed. "Well, if they weren't here, I'd probably be in the City mingling with haughty corporate assholes."
"Where would you rather be?"
She paused for a second in contemplation. Her job description was broad, to say the least. If she wasn't sneaking around a hostile stronghold, she was using her charm for industrial espionage in the heart of the commercial district for the sake of homeland security.
"You're asking me if I'd rather wear expensive dresses or swim neck-deep in Hive slime."
"So...?"
"The champagne doesn't drink itself." She smiled before continuing on through the vent.
After a few minutes of low crawling, the Hunter reached the end of the shaft. Making sure the coast is clear, she jammed her knife into the vent's bolts, opening it for her. Once she stepped out, Seraph immediately began a scan of the surroundings to find the Flayers.
"Bingo! I found them. I've marked a route into the excavation site nearby and it's lightly guarded. Looks to be a quarantine checkpoint for any Hive pathogens the personnel might be carrying."
"Not a problem." Evie unsheathed her knife from her side and held it with an icepick grip. She snuck down the corridor, her footsteps making virtually no sound as she moved.
She came upon four squads of legionary patrols as she reached the halfway point of the route. Like a true Nightstalker, they were none the wiser even when she was within a foot from one's face. But those were just patrols—she was meant to come across a tight quarantine checkpoint at the end of the corridor. And although a single colossus had more readily-available firepower than this checkpoint, there was no 'sneaking' through it.
…
After another half-hour of traversing Firebase Cognitionis's maze of tunnels, vents, and corridors, she finally laid eyes on the quarantine checkpoint from the hallway. It was just as she expected: two psions supervised the screening process while a centurion and two gladiators stood guard around the room.
Evie could've vanished and walked straight through the door if this was a normal military checkpoint, but the weapons on her back as well as the overwhelming Light signature coming from her body will set off the scanners and alert the base. Not to mention that vanishing was currently impossible; she was currently a Wraith, not a Trapper.
It was decided: she'll feed these Cabal to the void.
"How're the Spectral Blades coming along?" She whispered to Seraph.
"Light integration is at seventy percent. At this rate, it'll be another three minutes for it to be ready."
Damn it. Not worth waiting that long.
"Hawkins, you're cleared to engage at your discretion. Just keep it quiet if you can help it." Watcher said.
Thank you.
"Copy, Watcher."
Evie removed the compound bow that on her back and nocked an arrow. She aimed for the psion on the left and emptied her lungs before loosing.
THWOOP.
She wasted no time preparing another shot—right now, the Cabal were in a sudden state of panic after having just witnessed a psion disintegrate in arc energy. After recollecting himself from the sudden attack, the centurion quickly turned to face the hallway where the arrow came from.
THWOOP. BZZZT!
But as soon as he turned, he also found an arrow lodged between his eyes and subsequently disintegrated. That, and the two gladiators around them received a substantial electrical shock.
THWOOP. BZZZT!
Not even two seconds passed and the remaining psion received an arrow of its own—this further fried the remaining gladiators until they dropped to the ground; incapacitated, but not dead.
One of the gladiators that lied on his back was still seizing up, but he was able to open his eyes. To his misfortune, the last thing he saw was the Hunter standing over him, with her bow fully drawn and trained at his face.
Under his helmet, he wasn't angry. He'd already made his peace as soon as he realized who they were dealing with.
"Sorry, buddy." Evie muttered under her breath.
THWOOP. BZZZT!
That one definitely had it better than the other gladiator—the latter received a fatal three doses of a million volts. With a muscle mass as husky as the typical Cabal, it was only so much more painful.
Evie glanced around the room. No evidence, whatsoever. The Trinity Ghoul's arc energy quite literally burned off all the guards' armors and blood into nothing, as well as the arrows that delivered that electricity. Quick, clean, and silent. It was better than the alternative of gutting each of them with a knife. Hopefully, the Cabal don't realize that five of their units just got wiped off the map.
"Clear. Seraph, take care of that scanner." Evie deployed the Ghost from her hands towards the large machine next to the door.
"On it." Seraph projected a beam of light through his eye as a series of viruses was injected into the scanner. Once the machine began sparking, he dematerialized and integrated himself back into Evie's Light frequency. "You're good to pass through."
The Hunter raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"What's wrong?" The Ghost asked in confusion.
She gave a subtle, cheeky smile as she walked through the door. "You didn't trip a failsafe this time."
"I figured I should try something new." Seraph remarked with humor in his voice.
Evie continued on deeper into Firebase Cognitionis; each step forward made the tremors louder and more violent. She encountered plenty of Cabal units along the way, but she used the shadows and the ubiquitous ventilation systems to bypass leagues of armed patrols, who were mostly looking out for worms and unauthorized personnel rather than a Guardian.
Winding paths and a hundred Cabal soldiers later, and she finally made it to an empty observation room that had a clear view of the Hive fortress's atrium behind an immense one-way glass wall with long rows of benches wide enough to work as single beds.
The atrium itself was astonishing. The layout remained largely gothic and dark with the Hive architecture and an active portal larger than Crota stood menacingly at the opposite side of the room. But instead of the usual filth and grime typical with Hive fortresses, the Cabal had cleaned house and turned the place into its own staging ground, with vehicle depots and armories built into the walls alongside scattered research equipment.
In the center of the atrium, two Psion Flayers sat while levitating in the air, their hands to their heads as if trying to focus. Behind them, a battalion of four hundred hundred legionaries, a hundred each of phalanxes and war beasts, fifty gladiators, and two colossi stood at attention behind three centurions, themselves standing behind a single, lead centurion. They were preparing for a considerable assault.
The tremors originated from that portal due to the pressure the Flayers were putting into them. They were weaker now, but still enough to be able to knock her off her feet if she wasn't firmly planted to the floor.
"Shit. I know what that formation looks like." Evie could tell that they were gearing for an assault.
Seraph materialized next to her, looking at the active portal. "Watcher, are you getting this?"
"We see it. Ghost, scan the portal and determine its intended destination."
"Alright. Evie, stay here for a sec."
The Ghost disappeared and reappeared through the window before flying to the crystals sitting above each side of the portal. Sticking to the ceilings where none of the Cabal would spot him, he probed the Hive glyphs that were shown to him while taking care not to disturb the Flayers who were in their trance.
After a short minute, Seraph got what he needed. Behind the portal lied Sagan-16b, an exoplanet orbiting within the Goldilocks zone of the solar analog star Sagan-16 more than 782 lightyears away from Earth. As far as Golden Age astronomers knew or cared, Sagan-16b was just some run-of-the-mill habitable exoplanet among the hundreds of thousands that they discovered. It wasn't special then, so what could the Red Legion want with it? Surely it can't be for a new home since Sagan-16b had similar, if not slightly colder conditions as Earth—which itself wasn't ideal for the Cabal.
Not looking to linger any longer, Seraph teleported right back next to Evie's place, who was still eagerly observing the Flayers. "Transmitting the data now."
"We got it. Standby."
…
After a few short minutes, Watcher returned to the radio. "Hawkins, we just received new directives that may extend the mission by an unspecified amount of time. If you so choose, you can RTB and we'll deploy a fresh operative in your place, or you can continue the mission."
"Can I ask what the next objective is?" Evie inquired.
"If they're planning on going through the portal, you're to follow them and perform long-term surveillance on their plans in Sagan-16b."
The Hunter didn't even stop to think. "Shit, Watcher. You had me at 'follow.' I'll do it."
"Very well. There is one condition instructed by Ikora Rey: if your Light dips below a 90% operational capacity, you are to retreat immediately."
Evie was a tier-one Hunter—if they asked her to stay there even if the Light was completely gone, she would. But she's glad they didn't. Her duties as a Hidden CSO were dismally onerous without her Light. When she continued operations when the Red War began, it was one of the toughest lessons the war taught her.
"Six o'clock, a lone psion is coming to the door!" Seraph warned. Evie immediately sprung up and dashed to the wall on the right side of the door. Unsheathing her knife, she waited for the psion to step through and into her hands.
As soon as the door opened, she reached around for the psion. In a single, yet blindingly fast fluid motion, she grabbed the psion by its collar with her left hand, sliced open the communications device on his back with her knife, and slammed him onto the ground with one hand and that same knife held only a few centimeters from his eye.
She enabled the Cabal translator in her helmet's speaker. "When is the portal going to open?"
The psion only silently resisted her grasp with all his strength. Everything he could've done was futile. Growing impatient, Evie took her knife and pushed its tip against the psion's cranium. His cracked skin was incredibly tough, but the Hunter's knife was sharper. As she pressed the knife deeper into his head, the psion was practically screaming in agony.
"The pain will go away if you answer me, my friend. When is the portal going to open?"
"Fifteen minutes! Fifteen minutes!" The psion painfully shouted. Unfortunately for him, Cabal engineering made sure the walls they built were inherently soundproof.
Evie only responded with a silent, thankful nod before plunging the knife straight through his skull and giving it a quick twist, instantly killing the psion. To remove the evidence, she materialized an arc-charged arrow in her hand and stabbed it into the psion's body. In a few seconds, the body disintegrated in a flash of blue electricity.
"Right, we have until around 1523 hours until the show gets rolling. Lock that door, Seraph."
"Way ahead of you."
She sat patiently in the comfort of the observation room with a view that never changed. The psions maintained their concentrated trance in the middle of the staging grounds while the Red Legion battalion stood rigidly in attention with the discipline of a Titan. She lied down on the bench to ease her muscles for what's to come next.
…
15:28
.
FWOOSH!
Evie's train of relaxation was abruptly interrupted when the portal came to life with intensity. She shot up off her back and intently observed the battalion below. Activating the translator in her helmet, she listened closely to the lead centurion's little pep talk.
"They are more primitive than the Eliksni pirates by thousands of years, so there is no reason for you to not keep charging forward and only forward, even as you crush them with under your boot! Forge ahead as fast as you can and break their ranks from the front. Remember what you are here for—do not hold back while you slaughter the humans! Leave none standing!"
"The fuck?" Evie was taken aback at the mention of humans. "Watcher, you heard that, right?"
"We did." Watcher responded. "Ghost, are you positive that that portal opens into Sagan-16b?"
"One hundred percent. I even confirmed it with the artificial glyphs the Flayers were injecting into the crystals."
Human presence there was impossible—not even the finest Exodus Program colony ship could travel 782 lightyears between their launch and the present, much less be successful at that. If anything, the Cabal are mistaking an entirely new alien species for humans. And besides, if a Golden Age expedition did make it there, they would be far from 'primitive' as the centurion considers them.
Watcher sounded much more tenacious in the report. "The Vanguard has prepared Contingency Hercules. A sortie of sixteen Titans are en route to Tokyo. They'll be on standby and assault Firebase Cognitionis if things go south in there. ETA for combat readiness: twenty minutes."
Contingency Hercules is the Vanguard's specific response to immediate threats to civilian life outside the City's walls. It did exactly what Watcher described: deploy an appropriate amount of Titans to rectify the situation. More often than not, to 'rectify' the situation is to 'annihilate' the threat whenever it's issued. Because a three- or six-man fireteam is almost always more than enough, Contingency Hercules is used very sparingly.
"Roger that."
Below her, the centurion roared once more, this time much more loudly and passionately.
"ALL HANDS. FORWARD... MARCH!"
The observation room shook with the cadence of the Cabal as they marched forward through the portal. The war beasts and gladiators made a mad dash straight into the portal. The main battle group, consisting of the phalanxes at the front, the four centurions right behind them, followed by the layers of legionaries and two colossi marched in unison.
It was Evie's time to go. She sprinted to the stairs that exited directly into the atrium before calling upon the Spectral Blades and vanishing in thin air. She jogged right down the center of the staging area while the room occupied with Flayers and masses of high-ranking Red Legion spectators was none the wiser. For the first time since Twilight Gap, her bloodstream was flooded with adrenaline as she looked forward to the land beyond the portal. Following the Cabal, they marched through a pitch-black corridor that seemed infinitely vast that their helmet-mounted lights didn't reflect off any surface. But the floor was solid, flat, and as smooth as polished marble.
"Seraph, redirect 85% of my Light into cloaking. I need to stay hidden as long as possible." Evie said to her Ghost. Nobody heard her voice as her helmet muted her.
"Done. You'll stay invisible for twelve minutes while preserving modified locomotion, but don't count on effectively killing anything in this state."
She nodded and sprinted past the Cabal, trying to beat the main force well before they get there.
"Hawkins, this is Watcher. How copy?"
"Solid copy, Watcher."
"Give me a status report on your Light's operational capacity."
"I'm still at one hundred percent with zero fluctuations."
"Good. Keep on following the battalion, over and out."
.
.
.
Unknown, Sagan-16b
15:32 (Japan time), ~12:00 (local Sagan time, Ghost estimation)
.
When she reached the end of the tunnel, her mind ran blank except for one thought.
Holy shit.
The sky glowed a hue of beautiful light-blue while few patches of fluffy and delicate clouds was scattered above, indicating a clear, sunny day. The perfectly formed snow-capped summits rounded out the azure backdrop, creating a piece of serene artwork in and of itself.
But Evie couldn't take her eyes off of the utter horror that unfolded only a hundred or so meters in front of her.
Gladiators sliced straight through humanoid figures like a searing knife through butter—all of them were bisected. War beasts ripped, teared, mauled, and clawed everyone they saw with unadulterated carnage. There was already a mountain of carcasses in front of her, all of them mangled and brutalized with nothing but horror forever plastered on their bloodied faces. She only found four dead war beasts, each of them with a spear plunged deep in their mouths. No gladiators met the same fate.
The shock she felt kept her from even noticing the strange shields, swords, and armor that resembled those of the Ancient Romans from thousands of years ago. But even if she did, they were drenched in blood and gore.
Looking off in the distance, she saw scattered groups of people fruitlessly running in the opposite direction in total panic as the Cabal chased them down. Their terrified screams echoed through the plains.
"Evie, the genetic makeup of these bodies… they're human. Most of them."
"Most of them?" She asked in a silent voice, her mind still plagued with strong emotion.
"I analyzed a sample of a hundred blood samples the second we arrived. Eighty-six of them were homo sapien, the other fourteen seemed to be a mix of hybrids between humans and animals, and some were a totally different species altogether."
How the hell is this possible? That question can wait—right now, humans were getting slaughtered. She cannot let this continue.
Evie sprinted ahead to catch up to the advancing gladiators and war beasts. This happened once when the Red Legion invaded the Last City. She cannot let this happen again. In extreme urgency, she called out to her comms. "Watcher! Humans are confirmed to inhabit Sagan-12c and are facing an overwhelming Cabal force! Requesting orders!"
Behind her, the main battalion had completed their march through the portal and is in the process of holding the ground right in front of it.
Instead of Watcher, the determined voice of the Hidden's leader took over. "Evelyn, this is Ikora. You are cleared to engage with extreme prejudice. Contingency Hercules is active. The Titans still have to retake Firebase Cognitionis, so you need to keep the Cabal from getting too far from the portal until they get to you."
This was the fourth time Contingency Hercules was activated in Vanguard history. Firebase Cognitionis needed to be pummeled with overwhelming brute force if reinforcements were to get to the lone Hunter.
Evie's knuckles became white from gripping her knives. "Have them double-time it—I don't wanna be swarmed down here and there's minimal cover."
There's still some juice left in her Spectral Blades. She'll focus on thinning out the frontline Cabal to create a buffer zone between them and the humans, but her main purpose is to draw all of their attention to her. The mere sight of a Guardian is enough to make them drop whatever they're doing.
"Refocusing your Light for combat." Seraph said. "The Spectral Blades should last long enough to take out twenty of them before you'll have to resort to conventional firearms. You've got this, Evie."
There wasn't much of a battle to begin with—all of this was a clear massacre. With her targets in sight and void-charged blades in hand, she pounced with silent lethality.
The mission began with a single Psion Flayer in her crosshairs. Now, she's slinging lead with over six hundred Red Legion units. With little to no cover, the odds were insurmountable. She's more than capable of fending off dozens and dozens of hostile waves, but she was still a Hunter—she fought unconventionally in dense vegetation or tight urban streets, not alone in an open field like this.
All she needed to do was hold out until the Titans arrived.
.
AN: The Hidden's Combat Surveillance Group is an OC in-house special forces unit that is modeled to resemble the modern-day Special Activities Division, the covert ops paramilitary unit of the CIA. Its purpose is to differentiate between those who would simply do intelligence gathering (the Hidden) and direct action (Combat Surveillance Group).
Now that I've played Mass Effect Andromeda and thus got in touch with the rest of the Mass Effect universe, the CSG could also draw parallels off N7.
Also, the concept of Evie having a loadout of three regular weapons (2 kinetic and 1 energy) was inspired by Red Dead Redemption 2's weapon wheel system. Arthur Morgan had access to two one-handed weapons and two long guns (one could be a bow). One would be slung over his left shoulder and the other over his back. The same idea is used here, only instead of slings, Evie magnetically locks both her sniper rifle and her bow to her back. Her hand cannon is situated in her side holster.