"Incoming call." Ghost hovered over the ship controls.
Frea stepped through the low doorway into the cockpit, adjusting her armor. "Patch them in," she said.
"Guardian!" Hawthorne's voice blasted over the comm speakers, so loudly that the huntress jumped. "Still kicking I hope?"
"Still kicking," Frea replied with a smirk. "Better than ever actually, got my light back."
The other side of the line was quiet for a time. "Wait, seriously? Your weird little vision actually paid off?"
"Looks like it. So, are you calling me just to chat or do you need something?"
"Ah! That's right." The distinct sound of a clap could be heard over the comm. "Since you've got your fancy space powers back, it would be a great help if you could do something for me. I'd consider it a personal favor both to myself and to the Farm."
"There's no need, Hawthorne. I'm always happy to help. Is it about the downed comm network?" Frea asked.
"Exactly. We have the location for the last beacon picked out but it's right behind Fallen territory. I can get in, but getting out is the real problem. That's where you come in."
"Right. Clear out an entire Fallen hideout by myself...easy," the huntress said, her tone dripping heavy with sarcasm.
"You're a Guardian, aren't suicidal missions your usual forte?" Hawthorne chuckled.
Frea crossed her arms with a smirk. "We try to avoid throwing ourselves at death. It isn't really a pleasant experience."
"Well, seeing how you managed to get through the Dark Forest on your own. I think you'll do just fine," Hawthorne continued. "I sent a contact into the EDZ a few hours ago. He's a good guy, great shot, he'll get you up to speed on our plans. I'll meet you at the beacon, alright?"
"I'll be there." Frea reached over the clicked off the comm radio. She sunk into the pilot chair with a long sigh as she rubbed the tiredness from her eyes.
"We won't be getting much rest these next few days, will we?" Her Ghost drifted over her shoulder.
"We'll rest when Ghaul is dead," she curtly replied.
The Ghost stared down at her with its unwavering eye, studying her expression. "I realize you're worried over Dex but don't let the desire for revenge cloud your judgment. You have a tendency to obsess-"
"I know!" She snapped.
Revenge or not, she wanted that Cabal bastard dead. She now had the power to do so, but getting to him was going to be tricky. Asking others to join her wasn't an option, the Guardians already lost too much to the Red Legion. She was in this alone.
Hawthorne's coordinates brought the huntress to an old ruined cathedral sitting in the middle of Trostland, a small town well beyond its prime. Maybe during the Golden Age the streets here were bustling with people, but now only Cabal and Fallen dared to venture though the decrepit buildings. The majority of the town was swallowed by a landslide some time ago, making the single highway leading toward the outskirts vanish off the steep cliffside.
Frea materialized next to the church and ducked inside to avoid the Dregs patrolling the surrounding street. She looked up at the stone structure in awe. Despite the years not being kind to the cathedral, it was still beautiful. Soft sunlight poked through the stained glass windows, not even the harsh storms could dull the vibrantly colored scenes depicted in them. She wished she could have seen this place before the collapse.
"Up here!" A gravely voice echoed down from the rafters. The huntress's gaze shifted to see an older man waving from the highest window in the church. He was dressed warmly for the elements and a long sniper was gripped in hands. "You'd better get up here fast or one of those Fallen will spot you." His tone was lined with a thick accent. The stairway that once lead to his perch had long been demolished, now replaced with improvised scaffolding. Frea cautiously climbed over the rickety wood, not quite trusting the structure, it creaked with the addition of her weight but held in place. Once she neared to top, a helping hand reached down to her. She took it and the scout pulled her up and over the final threshold with ease.
"Thanks." Frea dusted the wood chips off her clothes. "You must be the contact I'm looking for."
"That I am." The man offered her a weary smile. "Devrim Kay-the Eighth-at your service. City militia, back when there was a City, but now I help out my dear friend Suraya Hawthorne. Though I must admit, when she told me about the Guardian who returned from the Dark Forest I imagined someone-" He looked her up and down. "Bigger."
"I'm Frea." She rested her hands on her hips. "Size doesn't matter when you have a gun."
Devrim's eyes widened slightly by her retort, but his smile steadily turned into a grin. "Cheeky. I see why Suraya likes you so much."
"Really? She's treated me like a lost child since finding me out in the wilderness."
He laughed. "Yes, she does that with everyone. Always playing the mother hen, Guardian or not. But anyway-" He raised a steaming mug filled with tea to his lips. "More important matters. We need to finish the network for the comm system so those seeking refuge know that the Farm is a safe place. Hawthorne already went ahead to the salt mine to secure the last beacon, but we've run into a problem."
"More problems other than the Fallen?" Frea asked.
"Seems so. The signal isn't reaching as far as we hoped. Since you're going in anyway, then you can get this booster to Hawthorne. Should solve our little conundrum, in theory." Devrim bent down to pick a disc shaped object off the nearby table and tossed it to the huntress. She caught it and turned the tiny device in her hands, inspecting the delicate wires.
"Clear the hideout, get to the beacon, retrieve Hawthorne. Anything else?"
"One more thing." He held out another mug of tea, the pleasant vapor rising from the warm liquid looked inviting. "You're going to need this."
Frea hated being underground.
She approached the old elevator at the entrance of the abandoned mine. Despite being under the surface for nearly an hour, she had yet to see a single sign of the Fallen. Her skin prickled with worry as she pressed the rusty call button.
"Frea." Her Ghost called in her head. "I don't mean to be pessimistic, but do you recall the last time we used an elevator like this?" Immediately she knew what mission it referred to. The one they ran for Cayde-6 over a year ago, when they had to ascend an old colony ship in the Cosmodrome. The lift they were forced to use was no longer in working condition, it took one nasty death for her to realize that.
The huntress took a step back just in time. The deafening screech of metal followed soon after as the cage broke off its rail and came crashing down with such force that it warped the entire elevator shaft. Frea reached up to wipe the salt dust blown up from the clamor off her visor. "Any other routes up, Ghost?"
"There's another elevator at the back of the mine, farther down," it answered.
"Great," she grumbled, unhappy with having to go deeper underground.
Somehow the Fallen hadn't been alerted to Frea's presence yet, even after her ordeal with the elevator. It was doubtful that would last for much longer. She crept along the cavern wall bordering a pit so deep her stomach lurched whenever she kicked a pebble out of place. The stones would fall so far down that the sound of them landing didn't reach her ears. The occasional Shanks that floated by on menial tasks started to grow in numbers the closer she got to the bottom. A clue that the Fallen were amassed just ahead.
The huntress finally reached the main mineshaft and peeked around a rusty crate. The Fallen were everywhere, but worst of all they were between her and the elevator.
"There are snipers," her Ghost chimed.
She moved her gaze higher to the two Vandals posted on the upper levels. Sneaking around wasn't going to work this time.
"Get a scan of the elevator and call the cage down, hopefully this one will actually work," she whispered as she checked her ammo reserves.
"What are you going to do?" Ghost asked.
Frea snapped the clip to her auto rifle closed. "I'm going to make sure the Fallen don't want to come back."
The moment her Ghost blinked out of existence, the huntress went into action. Her arcbolt grenade took out the closest group of Dregs as she leapt out from behind the crate. She rolled at the end of her fall, startling a Wretch, and gunned it down with a rain of bullets. Now the Fallen knew she was there.
She ducked under one of the high hanging walkways lining the mine to avoid the red dotted sights of the snipers. With a triple jump, she took hold of the metal railing and grabbed a Vandal by its purple vesture, yanking the creature down to its death and using the momentum from the maneuver to lift herself up at the same time. Tilting her body to the side, she avoided a bullet from the other Vandal and launched her knife into its head. Its body crumpled into a heap and slide over the side of the grating, landing just in front of the last remaining Fallen, the oversized Servitor looked up at Frea with a whirling hiss. She unholstered her gun, but the oversized eyeball didn't plan to go down easy like its brethren. It shot a void projectile at the chains holding the walkway to the cavern ceiling, dislodging the anchors and bringing the structure down along with the huntress. Frea cursed as she lost her footing.
The shroud of dust kicked up from the metal colliding with the stone floor obscured all vision in the cave for a few tense minutes. The Servitor slowly moved over the wreckage, confident that it had killed the singular Guardian. But just as it approached the center of the destruction, a knife shot out and stabbed it directly in its bright purple eye. The Fallen floated backwards in surprise, pulling the huntress still gripping her blade out from the broken walkway. Ignoring the pain in her shoulder from the fall, Frea grabbed the Servitor with her other hand and wrenched her knife free. Then she returned it again, over and over, she stabbed the creature in its eye until the light inside it no longer glowed. She kicked herself free of the dead creature and sat back into the dirt. Her head throbbed with her aching heartbeat and she was pretty sure her shoulder was dislocated, but she did it. The Fallen were gone.
"Frea." Her Ghost drifted over to her from the shadows. "Hold still."
Its warm light enveloped her body, healing the damage and her weariness. She gingerly lifted herself off the ground with a sigh as she removed her helmet. Her entire armor set was wrecked, not a single piece without a crack, it definitely wasn't made to withstand a Guardian's task.
"How's the elevator coming along?" She asked her Ghost.
"Ready and waiting. Thankfully this one won't try to kill you," it replied.
The sunlight burned her eyes when the elevator door opened to the outside. The fresh air was a welcome change, Frea had a feeling she'll be tasting salt for the next week now.
"You made it!" Hawthorne cheerily greeted. "Louis owes me money."
The huntress handed over the signal booster with her eyebrow raised. "You made a bet with your bird?"
Hawthorne smirked at her own joke, but didn't feel the need to elaborate. "Let's see if this works, shall we?" She pushed the disc into the beacon and started to tap away at the controls. Frea crossed her arms as she watched on. "Now, if I read the manual correctly..." A strange look crossed the woman's face. "There's an incoming message already."
That caught Frea's attention.
"Guardians." A voice cut through the comm system. She recognized it immediately to belong to Commander Zavala, though he sounded strained. "The City is lost. If there is any light left in the system, we rally on Titan. Be brave."
"Zavala's alive!" Frea's Ghost bobbled in the air next to her. "If we leave now-"
The sound of Hawthorne slamming her hand over the beacon controls silenced the Ghost. "You are not going to Titan!" She commanded. "We have refugees coming in, the Red Legion on one side and the Fallen on the other." Her arms waved out toward the horizon.
Frea frowned. "I have to retake the City."
"Your City is gone!" Hawthorne yelled.
Something snapped in the huntress's head. Anger, irritation, confusion...she wasn't sure which. "I will be back, Hawthorne." It was a struggle to keep her tone level and calm. "And I will not be alone."
Hawthorne turned away for a moment as if considering Frea's words, but when she looked back she had venom in her gaze. "You'll know where to find me." With that, she grabbed her sniper and left without bothering a second glance back.
Frea watched Hawthorne's figure vanish against the lowering sun.
"That was strange," her Ghost said. The huntress combed a hand through her hair, trying to ease the headache growing in her head. "Are you okay?"
"Not really," she replied and peered up at her Ghost. Its little light stared back at her, its thoughts unreadable. "Let's go back to the Farm, we'll leave in the morning."
The sun was just beginning to set when Frea returned to the Farm. She needed to stock up and replace her worn down gear before the mission to Titan. The minimal protection the refugee armor offered wasn't enough anymore, even by Hunter standards. She already knew just the person who could help her out.
Her feet brought her to the Crucible room in the hanger. The barn was busier than before, as was the rest of the Farm, more survivors were hustling around, tending to their errands for the day. She wondered if the comm system was already at work, bringing in new refugees every minute. The Guardians she passed watched her intently, the expressions on their faces were blank but something new was brimming behind their empty stares. Expectations. Hope. Jealously. They could sense the Traveler's light inside her.
The pressure wasn't anything new to Frea. She was given the same look before when her fireteam went after Oryx. At the time, the Taken were quickly becoming a threat to the City and failure wasn't an option for her clan. But now, this feeling was almost unbearable. All their eyes were on her only, burning holes into her skull. She promised Hawthorne that she would bring back the Vanguard, but could she really do it by herself? One mistake was all it took to make everything go crashing down.
The huntress quickly stepped inside the Crucible room to dodge her fellow Guardians' glares. A rush of disappointment swallowed her hopes when she noticed only Arcite 99-40 was present in the room. The frame glanced up upon her entrance.
"Good evening, Hive-bane," it greeted.
She gave it an awkward wave. "Is Shaxx around?"
Arcite tilted it's horned head. "Lord Shaxx stepped away quite some time ago. I believe he might be around the common area."
"Thanks." Frea quickly pivoted and walked out of the barn, keeping her gaze lowered to the ground.
She easily spotted his brightly adorned armor amongst the crowd gathered at the fire pit by the docks. A group of refugee children sat at Shaxx's feet, all looking up at the Titan with shimmering eyes, while the other onlookers surrounded the fire. He was in the middle of one of his many stories, an exciting one judging by his unrestrained attempts at mimicking a fight with some invisible enemy. A voluminous laughter erupted from the crowd and Frea moved closer, straining her ears to hear more clearly.
"-I pierced the Ahamkara's heart with my blade, charged with the energy from the storm cloud overhead." Shaxx made a tight fist as if he was holding the sword. "The beast fell out of the air with such fury that it crushed the Fallen horde chasing Zavala, leaving only a vast crater behind."
A round of clapping came from the crowd.
Frea leaned against one the pillars supporting the hanger barn. Shaxx used to tell her stories like this during their training days in the Crucible when she was still just a rookie. His tales of adventures were inspiring, though sometimes hard to believe. The way he told them however, always made listening to them a joy, he had a natural talent for storytelling.
His helmet turned ever so slightly in her direction and she realized he already knew she was there. With one beckoning finger and a small smile, she motioned for him to follow her.