Ultimatum 4: Win and Lose
A/N: These Hands by Maretu (JPN title: コノテニ from the album Fried Eye)
"You are sure about our chosen destinations?" asked Gravian.
"They were your Archons," replied Soren. "If they're holding out for anyone right now, they're waiting for you."
"How will you approach Earth? Our only escape previously was NLS immediately as we launched. They will expect you."
"You leave that to me. We both need to cut communication. It makes us easier to trace. Good luck."
"Light go with you, Soren."
After the channel closed and Soren's ship entered NLS for his approach, he called up his Ghost.
"This is supposed to be the last message, right? Can you play it? I haven't heard them all."
A visual opened on one of the ship's screens. The image was Morik, on Europa, standing on a metal bridge in the whipping winds. It was his Ghost recording, but Morik was looking up out of the ravine. Someone walked into frame, approaching him.
"Morik?" A woman's voice. The Stranger.
"You have time for another message. The fleets won't be here for another several hours to a day, depending on-"
"I have heard enough. Seen enough. No more talk of the future."
"You've said everything you needed to? You're sure?"
"I have told him my story. I have told him the truth. What else could there be, now? Shall I tell him what you told me? That it is certain we will all die, whether we deliver these messages or not? Shall I tell him - tell anyone else - that the chances our messages will even reach him are slim? There's nothing. Nothing left to say. Not to him."
The two were silent a moment.
"But there's something to be said… Isn't there, Morik?"
Elsie put her right hand up on Morik's back, as close to his shoulder as she could reach. Soren hadn't heard of her acting that way before.
"You were human. Tell me… Do you remember music? What it did to you? I once heard that music can entrain the human heart. If the right rhythm is kept, humans cannot help that their blood rushes faster or slower. The tones and pitch can cause emotional reactions most listeners do not recognize in themselves unless informed of the effect.
There is music now. Your words, this task - they have captured me. I see the future you speak of unfolding. Is there a charge in the air for you, like there is for me? Can you hear music where there is none? And… Are you afraid? Afraid, like me?"
Elsie's hand withdrew and Morik turned, dislodging his Mark that had been plastered to his leg by the gusts. Something about the image, the pause between them, stuck with Soren. Morik, framed by ice and metal, his Titan Mark flying at his hip while his black Warlock Bond clung silently to his arm, standing over The Stranger, whose cloak could only hide Morik's shins because of the angle. An Eliksni's glowing eyes, four arms at his sides, fists tightened. A Titan prepared to defy fate. It could be no one else.
"You should leave now," said Morik. "You can still die if you are careless. The longer you wait here, with us, the more danger you will be in. Go, and Light go with you."
"I wish there were more I could do."
"You have done plenty. You are stronger than I."
"I've seen what your kind are capable of as Guardians. It's a miracle you didn't destroy your own planet before the Darkness came instead."
"I meant your conviction. You have survived countless deaths and endings. Just the few I have seen have shaken me. I cannot know the burden you bear, but I hope you will learn to share it somehow before it breaks you. No one can last forever."
The Stranger was silent. The two said no more, and she vanished. Morik looked up to his right, the left of the screen, one last time to look at the brighter part of the ravine they were in. Toward the sun, the Earth, before he approached his Ghost and held out his upper left hand. The cut, from his time in Pujari's vision, had still never gone away, leaking something that was neither ether nor blood.
The video cut.
"You should know," said Soren's Ghost, "I did some scanning ahead of our departure. The old Tower's defenses are back up. I don't know how or why, but-"
"But it explains why the other team failed. We sent the weakest because it was the closest; still the most likely for success. I know."
"Our exit vector is as close as I could get us. You're sure about this plan?"
"Assuming you did the math right - which you always have before - yes. I'm glad I thought of it beforehand, since now I know we'd be getting shot at even after we hit atmosphere too."
"The Celestial Kestral won't survive the maneuver. Not in any condition to fly again if it lands at all."
"All part of the plan."
A pause.
"You think this last message is worth risking your life for?"
Soren scoffed and put on his helmet. "I'm not sure you understand what the last message is. Mithrax is going to have a harder time than Morik did. We all know that. He needs to know that even Morik had doubts. Mithrax won't be getting some over-hyped 'we can do anything if we try,' BS. I think Morik's trying to be as realistic as possible, but he still thinks whoever this is will understand… And succeed.
His words for The Stranger are for Mithrax too. He's packed as much wisdom and support as he possibly could into just a few hours of monologue. I don't need to listen to the message of him telling his story to know that; I was there when it all happened. Mithrax needs to hear this stuff, and he needs to hear it from someone who walked the path before and came out the other side. If it means helping the next go around, I'll gladly fight and die for them."
Soren's ship broke NLS just before Earth's atmosphere. Nose down, it sliced through and began to melt just as the friction let up and it could level out. Purely in the Ghost's hands, the ship dipped into a valley just low enough to pull out of the dive without slamming into the trees, then rolled just enough to pass between a rock formation and aim directly at the old Tower. The strain on the ship ripped pieces off, tore away armor, and melted the ends of the wings and nose.
The ship began losing altitude. Without the engines working properly, it wasn't aerodynamic enough to fly on its own. When the ship got close enough, just as his Ghost said, the old Tower's guns started firing on Soren's ship. Inside, Soren was checking his gear one last time.
"Ready?" he asked.
His Ghost looked out the cockpit window, then back to him. It faded, the only answer he would get.
"Breakpoint it is."
A Handheld Supernova blew off the top of the cockpit just as the Celestial Kestral got inside the Tower's firing arc. Soren jumped, flipped so he flew feet-first toward the Tower, and listened for the sound of his ship crashing. When he heard the explosion, he Blinked. His momentum died in the warp and he landed, sliding on his back, in the old bazaar.
His feet came to rest slowly on the wall and he looked around. The bazaar was empty. He stood.
"Scans?"
"The place is still as beat up as we left it, but… The power's on."
"How close are we to the objective?"
"Not as close as you'd like."
"Can you get me a path?"
"For now, head through the doors to the right and-"
Soren started moving. "And what?"
"I'm getting… A distress signal? I received some extra data with it, too. Video footage, I think, but it's pretty messed up."
"Can you fix it and play it?"
"I can. Hang on. You'll be going through some vents unless you want to burn through blast doors. Marker is up now, sorry for the delay."
Soren found the vent his Ghost had marked and ducked inside. He was walking through large, round vents when the footage came up and started to play, projected on his HUD.
"Rektis, do you see this?"
"They took something?"
"This is recent. The metal is still hot. What was contained here?"
"Have your Ghost check. Mine is working on the upload."
Kotos produced her Ghost. It took a few scans.
"What's the progress on the upload?" came Kotos' voice.
"About half," responded Rektis.
"That's not enough."
Rektis turned. He had time to recognize the English word "SIVA" on Kotos' Ghost display before he saw something through it.
"Down!" he ordered. She dove, and Rektis opened fire with an SMG on something crawling through the hole. Claws smoking from contact with the melted floor panel, a Taken Titan climbed through. It held up its other large claw to shield itself from the bullets. As it fully appeared and stepped into the light, once Rektis' clip was empty, they saw it in full detail.
Whatever had been left of this Titan, with armor from The Nine, was almost completely gone. The Taken's black influence and SIVA nanites had covered them almost completely, twisting together and overlapping.
Kotos drew her shock blades as she stood.
"I will fend it off! Protect the console!"
The rest of the video was short. Rektis and Kotos held back the single Titan for a few exchanges, but it had company. Once there were others, infested with SIVA in addition to being Taken, the two stood no chance. Soren had to manually cut the video when it didn't end after the two were being devoured alive.
"It's a good thing this can't get much worse," said Soren. He walked up the stairs and checked his motion tracker-
Which wasn't there anymore.
"Ghost?"
No response.
He produced the Ghost to find it red and black, SIVA tendrils hanging from it, main light flickering.
He stood motionless in the hallway. His Ghost had the video he was here to upload. To the future. Without it, he had no idea how the process worked, didn't know if he could access the video - it was pointless to risk himself.
He set his Ghost down, where it stayed.
There was a point. Get the SIVA away from the objective. Defeat the Taken that would obstruct anyone else that might come to help him. He could use the terminal to contact the others, then. The power was on, communications might be up too.
He broke into a run.
His Ghost's light went out as he disappeared around the corner.
Luckily, Soren's gear as a Warlock contained enough electronics to keep the mapping data from his Ghost. He wasn't able to sense nearby enemies, couldn't take additional scans to possibly alter his route for a faster way, and had no way to call for help - but he knew where to go.
His trek led him through the old hanger, through some hallways, down an elevator shaft to one of the civilian landing pads, through a long series of vents - practically all across the Tower.
When he finally came through to the vault, to the room where the video had taken place, it was empty. Soren began to walk forward, then stopped. His glove sensors picked up a change in temperature. He bent, picked up a stone dislodged during some previous battle, and threw it into the room ahead. The rock hit a panel on the floor and the room lit with high-frequency waves that would probably have melted Soren if it were him.
He looked up to see the emitters on the ceiling.
"I could destroy those. But that'll fry anyone who might be chasing me, which is one less door to worry about. So… How do I…"
The Cryptarch symbol leading to this room returned to his attention. There was a solution. What would it be? Soren returned to the vault to look around and he found that there was a working clock. Inside the vault, where no one would need to be looking at the time. He checked it over, and found the clock had its own power source, independent of the emergency power having turned on.
"The only thing I can think of that would help with those panels is the Light fluctuation pattern. It isn't the solstice, but the solstice just passed. If the order is…"
Soren kept mumbling to himself while he returned to the panels and looked them over. He chose a panel and stepped out.
"Ha. Gottem."
He walked confidently across a series of the gridded panels to the other side in a manner that traced the pattern of the Void fluctuation symbol. It wasn't a difficult solution, but it was one only a select few Guardians would know, and failure was instant death. Soren decided it must have been secure enough, because it was obvious that this wasn't the path any recent invaders had taken.
That was reserved for the broken vents overhead and the circular section of the floor that was melted through. Soren could see the terminal at the other end of the hall, could see the hole that had been carved through - where the Taken Guardians had come from in the video - but he looked around first.
"If they're not here yet, I'm just lucky."
He came around to the switch for the emitters. He decided that if he had to fall back for any reason, he would come here and shut them down. If he died without getting a message out, there was almost no chance that Morik or Ramiks would think of the solution on their own. If he got the message out, he could just include the solution for them. And if they were already dead, turning it off meant any non-Guardian that might have somehow survived and needed to steal some weapons to fight back with, well, they deserved a shot.
Soren drew his hand cannon and began to cross the hallway. He kept looking around, expecting to be attacked. He spotted a Taken Hunter at the same moment he entered its ambush.
A/N: X vs Zero by Falkkone, originally composed by Naoto Tanaka, Naoya Kamisaka, and Takuya Miyawaki
Eternity's Edge was in his hand in a flash. The Hunter dove for him, hanging on the ceiling at first, and he blocked. A quick slash upward threw it back through the air, where it flipped and landed on its feet. All around the room, in the other off-shoots, more Guardians dropped down from where they'd been hiding. Soren looked around at them all.
Kill them, protect the console, call for help.
Eternity's Edge danced with flames and became Soren's Dawnblade. His Heart of Praxic Fire surged in response, and the Taken lunged for him. Soren stepped into a wide stance, raised his sword, and spun. A whirlwind of fire tore through the room and pushed them all back.
The Hunters came first, faster than the rest. For now, it was two of each, but Soren didn't see SIVA on any of them. Soren deflected the claws of the first Hunter, hit it with a Fusion grenade as it stumbled, blocked a strike behind his back, and threw a Solar grenade at his feet. When the Hunter behind him staggered away from the burst, Soren slashed at the first Titan approaching.
A wave of fire left his sword and slowed it down, so he jumped into the air. He slashed at a Warlock preparing to shoot at him, released a barrage of fireballs, Celestial Fire, at the other, then dove for the remaining Titan. The Titan was undamaged, but Soren driving his sword through its chest fixed that. The Titan was carried to the ground on its back and a wave of Solar light ripped it apart from the inside out.
Soren turned, off-handed another Fusion grenade into the approaching assault, and freed his sword to slash twice more. The Warlocks hid behind support pillars and the rest were forced to dodge. Soren flipped the sword in the air and it split in two. He caught both and radiated his light through the room.
The Titan seemed to take his challenge and begin to use its own power, swelling up to twice its size and growing the tail he'd seen before. The Hunters did the same, but the Warlocks remained in hiding.
Soren, wielding two Dawnblades, found himself engaged with three opponents in close range. With each block and slash, he released an inferno of Solar light, but the three seemed determined to pressure him despite the damage they were taking. Soren's shields failed partway through, and that, predictably, was when the Warlocks showed their hand.
The two rounded the pillars, staves in hand, and used Stasis to try and freeze Soren. The blasts passed through the Hunters and Titan uninterrupted to dim Soren's Radiance, but he threw the Hunter he was blocking back and swept both swords up to shove the other Hunter and Titan away.
"You'll have to do better than Stasis when you face The Praxic Fire!"
Hands in the air, the two swords vanished. Soren launched a Nova Bomb of Solar light and obliterated one of the Hunters, forced the remaining Hunter and Titan to falter, and disrupted the Warlocks.
From there, Soren's hands were a blur. His light produced grenades faster than he could accurately throw them, and he used Celestial Fire to intercept the Taken Warlocks' Stasis crystals. Eventually, throwing the grenades just wasn't enough and he began simply burning his enemies with the power of Radiance directly. He remembered what he'd felt on the bridge, leaving Enki, and the technique finally solidified for him.
Hardiman, that crazy SOB… He was right.
Soren had his four foes on their last legs when reinforcements arrived. The Taken infused with SIVA crawled through the hole in the floor, two Hunters led by a Titan. The Hunters were Rektis and Kotos.
Soren pulled his hands in and his Radiance faded. He took a deep breath and felt his ribs creaking. No Ghost this time to nag him about overloading, just this damn mortal body complaining instead.
Soren was prepared to continue his attack when he paused. The four Taken he'd been fighting were looking back, at their reinforcements. He watched them cower, retreat a step or two closer to him. The SIVA Titan lashed out an arm and tendrils snapped through the air into one of the Warlocks.
"Ahhhh!" she shrieked. Some of the Taken influence retreated from her helmet and she grabbed the tendrils, Stasis staff forgotten.
"No! No! Please!"
The SIVA invaded her body and the Taken joined with it, surging back over her and silencing her. The other three untouched by SIVA stopped cowering and seemed to understand, then turned back to Soren, prepared to attack him again.
Soren, still watching quietly in his stance, blinked in his helmet.
"Yeah, uhh, pass."
His Radiance seemed to rush back to him from throughout the room in an implosion of Light. The Taken in the room staggered toward him and he appeared out of the flash with the Dawnblades in hand once more. An upward cross-slash and another Hunter went down. The Titan and Hunter warped back away from him so he jumped. The remaining Warlock untouched by SIVA launched more Stasis crystals toward him.
Soren dodged in midair and dove down in a double crescent slash to cut it down. When he landed, he turned and slashed upward at the SIVA Titan, threw the swords up, and blasted the Taken Hunter with his Solar Chaos Reach. It disappeared, mid-pounce, and he caught the swords as they came down to him.
Rektis warped close and slashed down with blades growing from his arms. Soren blocked upward and physically threw his other sword at the SIVA Titan. The sword flipped through the air and struck it in the shoulder as it charged. At first, it seemed not to care, but the sword exploded after a delay and sent it to the floor on its side.
The Taken Titan took that chance to get in and slash, carving Soren's shield away in one swing, then took his legs out from under him with its tail. Soren hit the floor and Rektis continued his attack. His blades slammed down through Soren's stomach. Soren didn't so much as flinch; he cut the two blades clean from Rektis' arms and rolled backward to get on his feet.
He saw, both at once, the SIVA Titan and Rektis' wounds healing. Stitching together with SIVA before the Taken goo rejoined the Titan's shoulder and reformed Rektis' blades. Soren reached down and pulled the blades from his stomach. His outfit didn't repair, but his wounds were healing.
Regular Taken first. They're easier to-
The SIVA Titan lashed out and infected the other Titan. Soren took a sharp breath and burned the other Taken Hunter out of existence while they left him alone. He jumped away, toward the center of the room, just as he heard Kotos' footsteps behind him. She had longer arms with extra joints. Shock Blades fused to her arms?
Ok. Now they're all infected with SIVA. Next plan. Switch or terminal?
The five started walking toward him. He was closer to the switch for the heat trap. He started backing up toward it and drew Eternity's Edge again, creating the Dawnblade. The Warlock, now infected with Siva, erupted with Stasis-infused nanite clusters. Like a volley of missiles, they flew through the hall and framed the two Titans and Eliksni.
Terminal.
Soren rushed them to meet them halfway, swept his sword to fling the wave across their heads, then leapt narrowly over them - under the turning arc of the nanite clusters. Nothing between him and the SIVA Warlock, he shoved his Dawnblade into it, lifted it into the air over his head, and slammed it down in the direction of the other four Taken.
The sword, his transformed Eternity's Edge, became a Well of Radiance and he drew his hand cannon. The Warlock was vaporized.
"Wanna see what I learned from Azariah?"
He fired three Golden Gun shots in rapid succession. One missed. The other two tore holes through Rektis and one of the Titans so large they fell apart instantly.
"Close enough."
He jumped back toward the terminal, started typing with one hand, and sharply raised the other. Kotos and the original SIVA Titan entered the Well just in time for it to explode upward in a flash. Soren caught Eternity's Edge out of the air as it flew toward his raised hand, then started furiously typing with both hands.
He got a channel open, went to hit the enter key to talk - and felt Kotos' blades in his back, right through his shields. The SIVA Titan had crawled up to the terminal as well, and began using it to stand while the SIVA was reconstructing his legs. Soren drew Eternity's Edge in his left hand and hit the enter key with his right. He stabbed the SIVA Titan through its head.
The channel opened to a conversation in progress.
"-last wisdom."
"That researcher, Hardiman, was right. Those were not the powers of a Titan."
"He was right. Gravian proved it first."
A comms channel opened.
"No," came Soren's voice, "She didn't. I think I did, by accident."
"Soren?!"
"I couldn't make it through here, either. I'm sorry."
He pulled his sword out of the SIVA Titan and it lost grip on the terminal and fell to the ground, temporarily unforming. Kotos, behind him, blades in his back, tried again to rip him apart. He closed the channel.
"Clearly, we need some privacy here."
He reached awkwardly over his shoulder and grabbed Kotos by her faceplate. SIVA and Taken influence began to overtake him.
"There's certain risks involved with using the Praxic Fire. Wanna see?"
He burst into Radiance again, bent at his waist, and threw Kotos clear over the terminal. Rektis and the other Titan were starting to stand up. Soren rushed into the hall toward them, his light welling up so much that it formed a visible round barrier of flame. Kotos was getting to her feet, Rektis and the Titan were trying to walk around her, and it gave the three of them the chance to almost surround him on all sides.
Soren threw his hands out and his Solar light exploded into the hall. When the light faded, and the dust settled, there was only a smooth crater.