Chapter 4: Fractures
Location: Space, Uranus Sector
Excal walked out of the Infested room, her shoulder bandaged. She was pale, but doing well enough, considering who she'd just faced alone.
"Seriously… I feel as reckless as Ember."
She headed back to the navigation room, and sat, staring at the emptiness of space flashing before her, with Atlas's Orbiter behind her, both heading away from Uranus. She felt like relaxing, but her ship comms flared up.
"Excal? Do you copy? It's Atlas. I'm receiving a distress call from an Orbiter a few clicks away. It's from Nova. She sounds totally freaked out. What do we do?"
Excal gaped for a second, then shook her head, concentrating. "What happened to her?"
"Let her catch up to us, Atlas. I don't want her message to be garbled."
The two Orbiters slowed down, linking their communications.
"Nova? Do you copy? What's going on? I thought you were still stationed on Pluto with Nezha?"
"Excal? Is that you? I… I need your help… I'm sorry… Nezha's d-dead..."
For a minute, silence.
Excal's eyes widened. She felt... numb. The word echoed in her head. "Dead.."
Was this real? What she was hearing? It couldn't be. It couldn't be.
They had all gone through so much together… They had awoken from stasis, survived Vor's hunt, Alad's madness, Stalker's vengeance, Hunhow's attack, the Queens' plan for them… Holding each other up. Some of them had suffered more than most along the way, like Frost… or Nekros… But none of them had died…
And now the circle was broken. They could never be complete again… One of them had returned to the Void.
"Excal? Are you still there? Excal!"
Atlas' and Nova's voice shook her mind awake from the fog she'd fallen in.
"I'm… I'm still here…" Excal leaned against the ship wall, staying close to the transmitter. "How did this happen? How?"
The silence lasted several seconds, Excal was starting to wonder if they'd been cut off.
"We were on a mission, hijacking a Corpus Mothership. I got to him too late… I just… I saw… Volt killed him. I think… he would have done the same to me. I was terrified. I ran. I'm sorry."
Excal's breath hitched. She felt like someone had punched her in the chest.
They were Tenno, all of them. They'd fought countless enemies. They'd killed… so many of them. But they'd never hated each other. They'd never fought each other in earnest…
The last memories she had of Volt came back to her mind. A particularly gory mission on Venus. He had never cared much about saving people… He loved to boast about his strength. He loved to fight as well. He'd sparred with Excal many times. But to kill another Tenno… She had never sensed such insanity in him. In any of them.
They'd been through so much, together… Since the fall of the Orokin. Their suffering, their mother, their new purpose to protect the universe, all this had bonded them together.
And now one of them had broken that bond. Excal couldn't risk this. How would that end? By them tearing each other apart, from the inside? One death was enough.
Excal cleared her throat, and spoke again.
"Atlas, Nova? We're heading back to Cetus, the three of us. Now."
Neither of them responded. But they didn't need to. Excal went back to her Transference chamber, knowing Ordis would set the course. Even the normally chatty AI had fallen dead quiet. Maybe he felt the same thing Excal was currently feeling.
Fear.