Minerva stared at the beacon with as much surprise as if it had just turned into a cat and asked her for a cup of cream.
She and Lev exchanged looks, before the Ghost moved closer to it again and started to rescan. Without thinking about it, Min let off a sharp, loud whistle. Then she moved closer to the beacon as well, straining to hear.
Moments later, Gen and Kalina sailed up on deck with their boots alight, weapons out and at the ready. They landed, and confused looks crossed their faces when they saw no enemy.
"What's going on?" Kalina asked.
"Not sure," Minerva told her. "Lev deactivated that beacon, and now it's playing music."
Kalina moved closer to the beacon and crouched down as her helmet vanished, almost putting her ear on it. "The static is so thick. I think a voice is speaking as well, in the music, but it's hard to make out."
"This beacon is receiving a signal from somewhere else," Lev said, as Min and Gen joined Kalina. For a long moment the three looked fairly absurd, on their knees around a rusted old beacon, helmets gone and heads turned, ears all but pressed to the metal as they strained to listen. Meanwhile, both Poet and Binky joined Lev in his scans, trying to pinpoint the origination point of the signal.
"I'm not familiar with the tune," Gen said. "It sounds like a pre-Golden Age ballet of some kind but I can't be sure. The voice…I'm getting broken words now and again. Min? Russian?"
Min nodded without straightening. "Blame', I think. That static is a bear to get through."
"Hang on, I think I can clear some of it up," Lev said, and while Poet and Binky kept on trying to get a bearing on the signal's origin, Lev played with the signal itself. The static softened a little, but only a miniscule amount. Min strained, squinting as she slowly recited.
"No immortality…no greater good, I think? Something, and then 'permitted'. If, as they…events cast…shadows? Leave reflections…hmm."
Then she and Gen both suddenly blinked in surprised as the static cleared for a moment, letting the words come through more clearly than before. "'They are but meat pressed in the mouth of the shell?'"
"That's what I got too," Gen agreed.
"That's not any less confusing," Kalina said. "What the heck does that mean? Is it talking about us? The Fallen? Something else entirely?"
"It's repeating I think," Min said. "'There is no one to blame, it is not their fault or ours. It is the misfortune of being born when the…world is dying?"
There had been a little blast of static toward the end of that one, but as the voice stopped that line and started on the next, the static came back with such force all three of them winced away from the beacon. Then, as unexpectedly as it started, it stopped. With a final 'click', the beacon went dead.
"That last bit has to be about us," Kalina said, wiggling a finger in her ear. "I mean, who else has the misfortune of being born when the world is dying? Gotta be Guardians."
"Not necessarily," Gen said. "After all, everyone- Lightborn or not- that's been born after the Collapse has pretty much had the misfortune of being born when the world is dying."
"Did you get the transmission coordinates?" Min asked the Ghosts.
"We did. It was being broadcast from Site Six," Poet said.
The Guardians got back to their feet, helmets wordlessly reappearing around their heads. "Saladin said the other Iron Lords had been sealed in the replication chamber," Min said to her companions. "Could one of them still be alive? Making that transmission?"
"I doubt it," Gen said. "I think that must have been the War Mind. Rasputin."
"Rasputin? That just opens more questions," Kalina said.
"Saladin, something odd just happened here," Minerva said, trying to reach the Iron Lord. "Some kind of signal that may have come from Rasputin. Saladin?"
"Too much interference," Lev said. "The same interference that created all that static on the beacon. I think the Fallen have more than one servitor with them, and they're using to them to disrupt transmissions around the entire area."
"They can do that?" Minerva asked. "Even Ghost to Ghost?"
"They can, though it takes multiple servitors to accomplish, and their range is limited," Binky said.
"Well then, I suggest we do what the man told us to," Gen said. "Let's get up on their backtrail and start taking them out."
How do I keep ending up like this?
It was an odd sensation, dying. Min had died hundreds of times by now, of course, but there was something especially disturbing about this kind of death. In the Crucible, and even in the field, death was usually quite quick. A Guardian who could still move was a Guardian who remained a threat. Even getting cut in half on the moon had been relatively quick.
That single flash of pain and then gone- Min didn't like it but she'd learned to handle it pretty well. What she had a harder time getting a grasp on was the long, slow, painful kind of dying.
They'd come upon the bulk of the Fallen in the Plaguelands. Most of the dreg and their shanks (floating drone constructs that exploded quite nicely if you shot them just right) fell quickly, but there were also three Captains on the field, four servitors, and an Archon. The Archon, who Lev had identified as Riksis, reminded Min of the Hive knight that had carved her in two. As the Captains were larger than the dreg, so the Archon was larger still. Seeing him, Min wondered if the very upper echelons of leadership among the Fallen weren't made up of fifty-foot-tall giants.
The servitors were what really complicated things. They could not only shield themselves but also the Fallen around them, and took an extraordinary number of its to destroy.
Gen was down, having been caught in an intentional crossfire. It seemed that Riksis was unconcerned with mowing some of his own people down if it meant wiping a Guardian in the process. Min was unsure if he was actually dead or just badly hurt, but he was laying out in the open. It was far too dangerous for Poet to emerge from his tag to try and heal him; the Fallen would have destroyed the little Ghost the instant he'd appeared.
One of the Captains had managed to get hold of Gen's wrist and was dragging him toward the edge of the battle, when Min charged in to save her friend. She hit the Captain hard enough with Solar that its neck broke, and it was torn away from the warlock- but as Min went to grab Gen herself to get him somewhere shadier, Riksis took her by surprise from the back.
He didn't even bother to shoot her. One arm grabbed her by the neck, another around the thigh. She tried to twist as she was hauled up into the air, letting off some rifle shot downward that thumped quite satisfyingly into the beast's shoulders. With a spitting howl of anger and pain, Riksis flung her to the ground so hard she felt her pelvis, shoulder, and ribs snap. Pain seared through her chest as her lung was punctured, stealing her breath in a fiery wave. Her rifle gone now, she tried to hit him again with a flare of fire but he dodged it easily. Struggling to get to her feet, she was slammed back down with a weak bark of pain as he stepped on her lower back, grinding her down into the ground.
She thought he was just going to crush her and have done with it, but he seemed to delight in her agony. Slowly, as he increased the weight on her, she could feel even more ribs giving way. Electrical jolts snapped like lightning through her brain as her vertebrae were pushed to the snapping point themselves.
Then he was off her, his sudden roar dim and distant. Min was left laying there, as exposed in the middle of the fight as poor Gen had been.
"Min! Min, can you hear me?" Lev was crying in her ear. He seemed to come from down a long tunnel, one made of cutting edges and red agony. Gritting her teeth, she let out a huffing breath clogged with far too much wet. "I can't get out to heal you. Can you move? Can you get over to those rocks?"
Min didn't even bother trying to look for the rocks he meant. Her arm scraped over the dirt and she weakly tried to push herself up, but the tearing ends of her ribs only stabbed deeper. She was struggling to breathe, hot fluid clogging her throat and nostrils.
That odd, slow, cold drawing feeling was coming over her. She was dying, slowly. No instant shock of black. No quick fade. If left on her own like this, it might take hours.
How do I keep ending up like this?
Levering an elbow under her in fits and starts, pausing to frantically catch breathe that came only through a wire-thin straw, she managed to lift her head.
"Pistol," she grit out.
The weapon appeared, shimmering on the dirt near her left hand. Her fingers groped out and found the butt, but she wasn't sure she could lift it.
I have to. I have to lift it. I have to get up to my feet somehow. Gen's down, in the open. Me.
That meant Kalina was on her own against that Archon, as well as the remaining servitor and two of the captains. Kalina was good, but if she went down too, they were well and royally fucked. If they were lucky, the Archon and his remaining Fallen would just leave them lie, keep on their way into the Plaguelands to find Site Six, where Saladin waited. Embarrassment would be the worst they would endure.
If they were unlucky, the Archon would rip their heads off and take them with him. He wouldn't spare the time trying to get their helmets off or cut through them to get at their tags- not when he could just take their heads along and then peel their tags out later at his leisure. Their Ghosts would be trapped, or destroyed, and that would be that. Three more permanently dead baby Guardians.
Pistol in her shaking hand, Min made a Herculean effort and rolled onto her back. The pain rose to such levels that everything swam around her, threatening to dart away. She felt stuffed full of glass and barbed wire. Her mouth was full of liquid, coppery heat. She was drowning in her own blood.
Then the hot was cold, searingly cold, and someone was wrapping a blanket around her. The laughter had stopped. Take it easy. Take it easy, you're all right. Mike. Mike! The world tilted and the shushing sound of water lifted to a hoarse roar.
Spitting a mouthful of crimson she rasped, "Helmet."
"Min-" Lev's worried voice was hesitant.
"Helmet," she said again. That pulling, drawing gray was growing more severe.
Her helmet shimmered and vanished. The cool, stale air of the Plaguelands felt like tin in her nostrils.
She could see Gen still laying where he had been when she'd tried to get to him. She saw the flame and flash of white as one of the servitors exploded. The Archon took up her view for a moment as he side-stepped across her field of vision. His shotgun barked at a Guardian that tumbled out of the way. The Guardian recovered their feet so quickly it was almost as if they'd never fallen, before a wave of lightning swelled over the ground, wrapping around the Fallen and making him bellow.
But, Kalina doesn't use Arc, Min thought groggily. Not like that…
She had just lifted the pistol toward the stunned Riksis' back when it came to her the Guardian wasn't Kalina at all.
It was Saladin.
She pulled the trigger twice. Two patches of blood, each the size of a half-dollar, bloomed out of the back of one of the Archon's legs. He twisted instinctively, letting out a roar at Minerva as Saladin hit him again, this time with his rifle. The roar redoubled as Riksis stumbled and nearly fell. As he caught himself, his hand grasped hold of a broken chunk of rock the size of a shank. He threw it at Saladin, who backhanded it away with another flash of Arc.
Then Kalina was there.
The Hunter seemed to come out of nowhere, sailing down as if falling from the sky. She landed on the Archon's shoulders, snapping her legs around his neck and one arm around his forehead. Riksis spun, clawing up toward her with a spray of blood fanning into the air. As he did, Min could see that Kalina's other hand had planted a six-inch dagger to the hilt in the Archon's eye.
Her cloak snapped as Riksis spun back the other way. Lifting two of his hands he grabbed at the Hunter but she clung to her hold with the tenacity of a boa constricting its prey. She was still hanging on to the knife handle sticking out of the Archon's face but seemed unable to get enough leverage to pull it out again.
One of the Archon's hands got a grip on her shoulder, two others prying at her legs as he tried to get them to loosen. They spun around again.
Min had made it up as far as her knees. Everything in her chest and torso felt broken and heavy. As the Archon spun that last time he ended up facing her.
For a moment, the entire tableau froze. Riksis, dagger in his eye and Hunter clinging to his head, stared down at the Guardian on her knees in front of him, before Min's pistol popped again. Two, three, then four shots barked. Two sparked off his armor, but one sank into the soft flesh under his chin in the inch or two of space between Kalina's leg and the metal of his mask. With almost a spasm of determination, the Archon finally solidified his hold on Kalina and tore her off his head, throwing the Hunter at Minerva just as Min's fourth shot went off. Kalina crashed into her, driving them both back onto the ground.
The Hunter was up and off her an instant later, and as she ran forward after Riksis Minerva realized with a sluggish incredulity that Kalina now had a pistol in her hand. Min's pistol. Somehow, she'd snatched it from Min's fingers even as they hit the ground.
The world went soft and gray for a time, the gray deepening by slow degrees until it was very nearly black. Then, color and vision and sound began to return to her, and she saw Lev hovering over her face, his healing beam surrounding him in a soft white halo.
The pain was retreating, clarity returning, when Saladin reached a hand down toward her. Swinging hers upward, she caught his and let him pull her up to her feet.
"There you go," he said. "Good as new."
Past him, she could see Gen getting weakly to his feet, Poet hanging nearby. Pushing past Saladin, Minerva limped over to the warlock. "Gen, you ok?"
He bobbed his head, dusting at his arms. "Another day, another death. Kalina?"
Min looked around. The landscape was a ruin of torn up dirt, blood, scraps of metal, and dead Fallen, but there was no sign of the Archon and none of the Hunter.
"She was chasing after him," Saladin said. "This way."
Forge struck out toward the north, Min and Gen quickly on his heels. The echoing sounds of gunfire filled the air as they reached a slope, and they picked up speed.
Min reached the top of a sloping hillside, and though she could see for quite a ways in each direction, there was no sign of Archon nor Hunter.
"Kalina! Kalina, talk to me. Where are you?"
{This guy is really lively considering he still has my best knife sticking out of his face,} Kalina replied. {He's cut east. I've lost sight of him but I'm still on his track. I think he's looping back around toward camp.}
"That doesn't make sense, does it?" Gen said, looking at Saladin.
"You don't get to be an Archon by being stupid," Saladin said, as they broke into a jog along the slope, curving away from those huge doors. "He's on his own now, and he's wounded. His priority now is to get away, regroup, and then lead a damned army right back here to keep hunting for Site Six. Kalina, we can't let him escape."
{I'm on it, Boss Man. He's-…oh you clever asshole!}
Gunfire cracked again in the distance, and Minerva began to run.
