"hoping for a light at the end"
"What are they looking for?"
One question. Just one. All Ikharos wanted - all he needed - was a single answer. A simple hint would tide him by, and the Stranger - she wasn't being as forthcoming as he would have liked. They were running, the two of them. Running through an old corridor bathed in pale yellow light towards the hangar bay - or maybe for somewhere else. Ikharos wasn't sure. He could have asked her, but she was long past the point of explaining things in any meaningful way.
"Wrong questions," she shot back. Typical, but it hooked him in all the same. It was her forever-tact and it was his greatest weakness. Curiosity.
"Who?" Ikharos rectified. "Who are they looking for?"
"An enforcer. A sycophant. A problem-solver."
"Hive?"
The Stranger shook her head, faceplates still schooled with a sharp, focused expression. Unreadable. There was something to be said for that - that she was purposely leading him on, leading him astray for one reason or another. That she didn't want to tell him anything; maybe she was wary as to what he would do. Or maybe she was worried they would be overheard. With the Exodus ship waking up around them, Ikharos wouldn't have blamed her.
But it didn't sit right with him either. Because he was sure she was keeping him in the dark for a reason.
"What now, then?" Ikharos questioned. A query for the present. Reasonable - or so he thought. Certainly a priority.
"We need to reach hangar control," the Stranger quickly explained. They turned a corner and raced down the next hall, boots slapping against the smooth steel floor. "If the Scorn get inside-"
"This ship won't have the weapons to keep a Ketch at bay," Ikharos dubiously remarked.
"The Ketches we can't help. But the Skiffs? Those are well within our control."
"Damage mitigation."
"In a sense." The Stranger slowed, hesitated, briefly glanced his way. "Have your Cabal close in."
"That will trap them, if the Scorn decide to cut their way through."
"The Scorn are hitting this place whether we want it or not. We can do what we can to keep them at bay for a time, then scrape the slate clean once it becomes clear we can't stop them."
"Clean of what?"
"Intel. What happened here - we can't give them the full picture. We can't let them dive at their own pace, if it can be helped. They outnumber us too sorely as it is."
"Dive?" Ikharos sharply repeated. "They're diving?"
The Stranger nodded - a quick motion, the barest dip of her head. Her optics were narrowed to slits of wary white light.
"The anomaly will rip them apart."
"Not if they're ready for it. Not if they don't repeat the mistakes of those who came before."
"The crew," Ikharos realized. "They dove?"
"Not voluntarily."
"Elizabeth-"
"Ikharos, we need to move." She ran on, pulling back on her rifle's safety. Ikharos huffed a frustrated sigh before taking after her. They came upon the hangar - so he was right - and slid to a stop as a new hurdle presented itself. The remaining Cabal were arrayed in a shield wall around the foremost Harvester, firing upon ranks of ragged, ancient Frames. No Exos in sight, but there was a Heavy Frame at the back, tall and plated in dark angular Warmind-grade armour. Orange energy glowed from its core and a cannon rose from between its hunched shoulder blades, charging up a heavy plasma shot. The ensuing blast ripped through a line of Cabal, simply seared them from existence without even allowing them time to scream.
Ikharos Blinked, emerging amidst the Frames with a burst of charged Arc that flowed between the constructs and reduced them to smouldering piles of half-melted scrap. The Heavy Frame stumbled and turned to engage, groaning with incomprehensible mechanical chatter, and he raised his hand to it - letting the Void rip out from his palm, shredding the Heavy Frame apart with boiling vacuum. It lurched back, already half dead, and he stepped close - lover-close, close enough to whisper to it, close enough to manifest his glaive out of forbidden magics and plant it deep in its energized core. The Heavy Frame flinched, shuddered, died. Ikharos pirouetted out from beneath it as it keeled over with a crash, glaive at the ready, and found the rest of the automated drones being fired down by the Stranger. He offered her a nod, but she didn't so much as look at him - instead bounding over to the other side of the hangar.
"Control centre," Xiān explained, if a touch dubiously. "I think."
Ikharos pulled his glaive free and allowed it to dissipate, then turned to the Cabal. A couple of wounded, he saw, but the others were quickly loading them up. No one bothered with the dead. The Centurion from earlier had made it safely back and perked up at his approach. "Get out," Ikharos ordered them. "Now."
"Scorn-"
"Go." Ikharos turned on his heel and began marching in the direction the Stranger had disappeared. "I'll join you shortly."
He hurried on, took to the other airlock adjoining the hangar and then the stairwell beyond, ignoring each step entirely and simply rising up on a flush of misted Light. Ikharos landed at the top, found the entrance to hangar control ajar, and strode inside. The Stranger was within, picking at a damaged console and staring at the dusty screen.
"Self-automated turrets," she hastily explained, not even sparing him a look. "Can Xiān hack them?"
Something in Ikharos stalled. "You know her name," he said carefully, thoughts in disarray.
She flinched. She stilled. She started tapping the edge of the console with a finger. "Please."
"I can hack them," Xiān replied, emerging into realspace. She flitted over to the Stranger's side, scanned the console and flew to another. "Low power, though. How there's any juice left is a miracle, but still."
"Fire on any Skiffs in range," the Stranger ordered. "There's another two hangars to cover."
"Yeah, I can feel them now. They're far."
"I'll make it." The Stranger turned her head. "Ikharos."
"What?"
"I can take one. Can you handle the other?"
Ikharos opened his mouth, then closed it. "Xiān," he said simply.
"I'll be fine," Xiān assured him. "Just activate the defence grid and I'll slip inside from here."
"But if an Exo-" Ikharos was cut off with an internal ping - an alert surfacing on the hallucinatory HUD of his sensorium. A datapacket bearing Golden Age code that injected straight into his internal radar.
"There," the Stranger said. "I've identified their electromagnetic signatures. We can triangulate from there, the three of us, once we're in position. It's not pinpoint accurate, but it works."
"You've actually done this before," Ikharos accused. "This is serious."
"Yes, I have." The Stranger made a shooing motion. "The Scornships will be upon us in only a couple of minutes. Go."
Ikharos looked to Xiān.
"I'll be fine," she told him.
It didn't reassure him in the slightest.
He hurtled down corridor after corridor, riding on Blinks and Solar dashes. The ship's lights flickered the whole way, they buzzed and they blinked as the electricity powering them began to run thin. He expected the Exos were to blame for it coming back at all; maybe they'd packed away some power cells, possibly a superconductor, and hooked it up to the generators on wake up. That was his theory. The Exos he met on the way didn't disagree. Two of them rounded a corner ahead of him with stun-rifles at the ready. Ikharos had seen them coming, had implemented the Stranger's software to read their signatures and he Blinked between them even as they appeared before him, dragging a hand wreathed in crackled Arc across the shoulder of one and splaying his fingers in the direction of the other, freezing the second Exo solid.
The first jittered and fell over, overloaded with searing sensations. Its optics, pink-hued and bright with oh so human surprise, landed on Ikharos with a disbelieving stare. It wasn't even a significant jolt, either; just barely skirting that threshold he knew Exos could take. Ikharos swatted the gun from its unfeeling hands and caught it by the neck, levering the robot up into the air and slamming it against the wall of the corridor.
"Name," he barked. "Rank. Standing orders. Speak."
The Exo stubbornly remained silent. It grabbed his arm, tried to break his hold, but Ikharos was not deterred. He allowed another charge of Arc to flow through him and into the transhuman soldier, shocking them back into helplessness.
"Speak," he snapped. "It's now or never."
No reply. No answer. Just the cold, cold glare only a machine could give. Ikharos groaned and froze it like he had its fellow, leaving it stuck to the wall. He stepped away, glanced between the two and, checking that there wasn't another lying in wait, hurried on - thanking his stars that these two hadn't dragged any Frames with them, lest they slow him down.
The third hangar rested on the other side of the ship and would have taken him an hour to reach, if not for Xiān's directions and a couple of Blinks through layers of solid metal, cutting that time down to ten minutes. By which the Stranger was already checked into their personal comm-channel and reporting, "They're here."
"I'm almost there," Ikharos reported, throwing open the airlock leading to the control centre. "What's happening?"
A small image flashed up on the edge of his vision, playing over the sensorium-linked lens implanted in his cornea. The feedback that came with it carried Cabal runes, dialects, code - a live transmission from the BattleNet feed broadcasted from the Rancis Olyptus. He could all but hear Vindica'aur shouting. The frigate was turning towards a spot in open space near the Exodus wreckage, somewhere just beyond the Thresher screen already colliding with Skiffs emerging from jump. Essence coiled within the black nothingness, a pale blue mist, and out of it a Ketch thrusted from warp - knife-shaped, sharp-edged and aimed directly at his current location.
The Rancis Olyptus opened fire, peppering the Ketch's hull with plasma bolts and heavy kinetic slugs. The ship, either the Yimiks-Syn or Ariks-Fel, sailed onwards, weathering the barrage with reckless delusion. Brief flashes of fire bloomed from its flank, plating was gouged away and the Cabal hammered it with all they had - and it still carried on, heedless to a fault. Scorn tunnel-vision; Ikharos expected no less. The Rancis Olyptus, seeing as its target was not to be dissuaded, surged forwards with its frontal shields glowing a bright orange - preparation for ramming into the Ketch and splitting it apart. He'd seen a similar fate befall Hive ships on the edges of the Reef. Ikharos didn't envy the-
There was a flash to the side, abrupt and dangerously close, and Ikharos heard a sensation of confused panic crawl down the BattleNet as the second Ketch manifested at the frigate's stern and glided into it, prow cleaving through the Rancis Olyptus's side and dragging the bladed length of its underbelly along the Cabal ship, hooking on its hull. The Rancis Olyptus's shields, weakened in preparation for a frontal charge, shattered with little resistance. Distress signals peppered the feed.
"Shit," Ikharos breathed.
The frigate listed to the side, towards the anomaly, and the Ketch cruelly chugged along at top speed. The Rancis Olyptus creaked dangerously, firing at the Ketch at point blank with what turrets and cannons were still operational, but it was already a lost battle. Ikharos could all but feel the metaconcert around the frigate shifting to desperate terror. He ignored it in favour of watching the original Ketch, noting how it was aiming for the same tact with the Exodus ship.
The very same wreck he was trapped within.
"No no no," Ikharos stopped by the door of the control centre. "Elisabeth, the Ketch is en route!"
"I know," she replied, strained. He could distantly make out the pop-pop-pop of gunfire. "Your screen's falling apart."
"The Rancis Olyptus is dead in the water," Ikharos continued. "Scornship's driving it into the gravity shadow. We don't have time. Xiān! Get into the BattleNet, order an evacuation-"
"They're already past the threshold," Xiān shot back, voice high with panic. "Scorn are driving them into the depths! What... What are they doing?!"
"Same thing they'll inflict on us, if we stick around." Ikharos began backtracking. "Elisabeth, get to the Trespass, now. We need to quit this place."
"No time for that," the Stranger said, resigned. "I thought... I thought we'd have more time. Activate the defence grid. We can still thin their numbers."
"We can still escape! Elisabeth, get to the Trespass!"
"No," the Stranger said, then her voice fell away. A manual disconnect, Ikharos saw. Manual.
What was she...
"Xiān," Ikharos said, filing that away because he didn't have time to even think about it. "Call off the Threshers, the Harvesters. See if they can reach the Rancis."
"It's already falling too fast. Ike, it's gone."
"There's three hundred souls aboard-"
"It's gone," Xiān repeated more forcefully. "The anomaly's already catching them. It's... it's pulling them in."
"Ketch?"
"A minute away. Ike, none of us are going to-"
"You get the Trespass out of here, then. You're closest." Ikharos, despite his better judgement, pulled the doors to the hangar control ajar. He beelined for the nearest command console. "I'll get this thing online, you bring the Trespass around for us."
"... Alright. Moving now. Ketch is-"
The entire ship suddenly moved.
"Here," Xiān lamely finished. "Driving you into the void. Oh Traveler above, you're too close! Ikharos-"
"Moving for Bray, starboard side. Meet you there." Ikharos raced out of the control room, all but stumbled down the stairwell as the ship shifted again, and Blinked across the hangar and then deeper into the ship. He could see the Stranger's supposed location on his radar, provided she hadn't moved elsewhere in the time since, and cut a chaotic charge though the Exodus's maintenance deck to reach her. He'd barely made it halfway when Xiān cried out, "Too far, too far, Ike!"
"Just get out of here," he snapped, his tone rendered curt with very real fear - and a desire to keep it down, keep it suppressed lest it be turned back onto him. His blood turned to ice in his veins; his every instinct was telling him to get out now, to claw his way through the ship's hull and brave open space - because the anomaly would show him no mercy. Better asphyxiation than to be strung up with vile mycelial growths like some sort of grisly trophy.
"No, I'm-" There was a buzz of interference. Whatever she said next, Ikharos couldn't pick up on it.
"Xiān?" he barked. "Xiān, respond! Xiān!"
Nothing.
Shit shit shit.
"Xiān, if you can read this, steer clear," Ikharos said slowly. His voice didn't waver. He found himself feeling surprised by that, and gladly so. "Take the remaining Cabal and hightail it back home. I'm going to link up with Doctor Bray if I can, see if there's any place aboard we can hole up. Good luck."
The silence that followed hit him harder than any hammer and cut deeper than any blade. Ikharos tried to keep it from getting to him, terrifying as it was, and forced himself onwards.
When he found the hangar he discovered it littered with bodies - an abundance of Frames, three nondescript Exo soldiers and a couple of dismembered Scorn limbs still twitching and flexing with a kind of unquenchable zeal even death couldn't stamp out. The very air was thick with the stench of them, the rot and the blood and the Dark ether. It was enough to make him gag, to force him to lean back on his helm's filter systems. Ikharos delicately picked through the battlefield, for that was all he could describe it as, and found... nothing. No sign of the Stranger - but the remains of a Skiff had managed to ram itself inside the hangar, still flaming and still quite dead. No Scorn lurked within the wreckage; they must have moved on. The hangar bay was still caught in the grasp of artificial gravity and the blast doors had been replaced with emergency shielding, but the lighting ran out not a minute after Ikharos's arrival, plunging him into a deep darkness.
The Exo's emergency power source must have been running low. The gravity and air remained, but if the lighting was the first to go, then he doubted the rest of the life-support systems were to last much longer. Which... didn't bode well for him. Not with Xiān out of the equation.
Once it became clear to him that the Stranger wasn't to be found in or around the hangar alive or dead, Ikharos retreated further into the ship. It was almost instinctual; on all sides he could feel the Dark, shifting and slithering around him, pressing in from around the ship and coiling around its remains. He was in its grasp, now. It nicked at his Light, bit and scraped at the edge of his soul, and Ikharos shied away from it. He fled before it, fled inwards, and he made for the ship's core - as far from the Dark as humanly possible where he was, equal parts distant in every direction. He wasn't alone in that, he soon discovered; his radar picked up on the presence of other Exos thanks to the Stranger's software, blurry signatures steadily congregating further within the colony ship. He could all but hear the Scorn too, howling and tearing their way through the vessel, on a rabid rampage to kill everything they found. It was the Glykon all over again.
And he was to take the place of poor Katabasis.
Ikharos staggered down the umpteenth corridor, overcome with sensory overload, and he lashed at the Dark with his own taste of brutal power - cold crystals collecting along his arms and a surge of resonant mass flexing between the fingers of his clenched fists. It was raring to go, eager to kill when he just wanted somewhere to hide, somewhere to ride out the storm. It prodded him with whispering temptations, offered him brutal satisfaction in the tearing of flesh and cracking of bone, but Ikharos was quick to tamp it down. It scared him - and yet he allowed it to remain on the periphery, permitted the foul essence to stay bound around him. If anything it hid the glow of his Light from prying eyes; all the better to hide himself with.
He fell by the wall of the hallway, gasping for breath and struggling with the instinct to tear his helmet off. He couldn't trust the air. The Exos could have poisoned it. The Scorn too, even if through presence alone. As it was, he didn't see his air supply lasting long without Xiān present. He needed-
He needed another supply. There. Something to aim for. Something to plan around. Water too; his throat already felt painfully dry. Air and water. Food next, maybe. Not quite so pressing but still a necessity, depending on how long the Exodus wreck remained submerged. If there was an end to it in sight, anyways. The Glykon had emerged from Mars, though, hadn't it? The Leviathan from Mercury too. Then surely the Rancis Olyptus would survive. The frigate had an able crew to ensure as much. Certainly better odds than he. And they had the soldiers to fend off the Scorn - maybe. That hinged entirely on whether the Locus was aboard the Ketch that had assailed them or the very vessel that had exiled him into malignant obscurity.
Ikharos's radio flickered and spat static. He frowned and caught the signal beating his own blockers, looked it over and allowed it to filter into his sensorium's auditory feed.
"Chieftain headed your way," the Stranger whispered, voice tinged with static. He couldn't tell if it was her or just their connection.
"Elisabeth-"
"Frames closing in on your other side, portside. They're going to catch you between them. You need to move. I can see where you are; you're only a couple of levels from the botanical gardens. We can lock the doors there, secure a couple of hours for ourselves. Can you make it?"
"Where?" Ikharos inquired.
"Sending now."
His radar shifted, grew sharper. What vague layout of the ship's architecture Xiān had left him with finally came into focus. "You've been holding out on us," Ikharos murmured. "On my way."
"Move quietly."
"Will do."
The botanical gardens were large and devoid of life. The soil was infertile, dry, and absent of even a single weed. It was all but abandoned too, so the Stranger stuck out like a sore thumb, having set up position in the middle of the room and of equal distance between both exits. She wasn't alone, either; another Exo lay at her feet, half-frozen and quite dead. She had her rifle clutched tightly in both hands, aiming it up at him the moment he arrived but lowering not a moment later. Ikharos stepped through and the doors clicked shut behind him. "Nice place," he murmured. "You plugged in?"
The Stranger made the hand motion for 'sorta'. "I'm fighting off firewalls," she said with a wince. "It won't last."
"Couple of hours, you said?"
"If we're lucky."
Ikharos nodded, walked over and settled down on a knee. He began laying out his weapons - those he had on his person, at least. So: sidearm, rifle and knife. The glaive went unmentioned, incorporeal as it was. "Don't have near enough ammunition to last," Ikharos glumly observed. His gaze settled on the rifle. "Except maybe with this - but that's a last resort I really don't want to turn to. Is there an armoury we can raid?"
"With the rest of the ship," the Stranger grimly reported.
"What about the Exos' weapons?"
"Biometrically-locked. Frames' weapons included."
Ikharos looked over the frozen Exo. "So there's more of these scattered about?"
"Yes," the Stranger replied, pacing impatiently in front of him. She wanted to move, Ikharos deduced. She wanted to bring him somewhere, show him something. Which conflicted fully with her idea that they grab a couple of hours to plan, rest up, account for what they had to burn and what they had to preserve.
"How old?"
"Golden Age."
Ikharos exhaled. "Damn. How bad?"
The Stranger slowed to a stop. She let out a muffled sigh. "Bad."
"Any of them hitting D.E.R.?"
"They're close. Some, I think, might even be beyond."
"It's never pretty."
"No," the Stranger said quietly. He caught her looking off into empty space, momentarily distracted. "It's not."
Ikharos looked up at her. Her stance was tense and her optics flicked all around the room. It wasn't fear per se, but it was even farther from comfort. It was anxiety, hanging on the stiffness of her limbs and the straight arch of her spine. There was exhaustion there too - not the physical kind but emotional, psychological. She turned to him and in that split-second that her gaze met his Ikharos saw something that all but confirmed his prior suspicions; it was a moment of brief weakness, a momentary lapse of control and he recognized the need for reinforcement.
"You've fallen before," he observed.
The Stranger schooled her faceplates and set her jaw. She didn't give him an answer. He didn't need one.
"And with some other version of myself, probably," Ikharos continued. "Elisabeth. What's at the other end?"
"The other end?" The Stranger barked out a hollow laugh. "We have a gauntlet to run first."
"What's that?"
"It could be a day or it could be an eternity. It's never predictable. Unless you're willing to step outside. Then... then it might pass by quickly enough."
"Eternity?" Ikharos questioned.
"We're caught in a trap. A cell of a prisoner's own making."
"Whose?" Ikharos realized the answer even as he asked the question - or at least he ascertained a part of it. "The Scorn's target."
"Target isn't the right word." The Stranger looked away again, at the far wall. What was she searching for? "Commander-in-waiting."
"A Disciple," Ikharos dared to guess, hoping she would deny it.
She didn't. The Stranger just tightened her jaw.
"Are you familiar-"
"Yes."
"Care to tell?"
"I..." the Stranger grimaced. "I'd almost rather not."
"For fear of everything ending up like before?" Ikharos inquired. Not that he knew of anything about her BEFORE, save for some stray rumours and unwitting hints dropped by Jaxson, Eris, Mara, old Germaine. "You could at least warn me about which mistakes to avoid."
"And risk you developing tunnel vision?"
"It's all mights and maybes in theory, but we won't know until we put it to practice."
"We," the Stranger bitterly echoed. "We. You say that like you're going to be around to account for every mistake, like you're going to be alive to rectify where you went wrong."
"So… I die?"
"You always die, Ikharos. Everyone always dies. I'm just trying to find the timeline where 'everyone' is replaced with 'some people'. So - thank you, but no. It's my curse alone."
"I know well about curses and the effects thereof," Ikharos replied in a soft voice.
The Stranger flinched. "I..." she said. "No. I... let me think on it."
"It's my life, Elisabeth. I think I have a right to know how to keep living it."
"And it's me who buries you when you don't," she retorted without any heat. "Your deaths don't carry over. These hands of mine do."
Ikharos ducked his head. He began counting out how many bullets he had left in his head; anything to keep the implication of her words from digging too deep. "What's on the other side?"
The Stranger sighed. "Paradise."
"Ours or theirs?"
"Mix of both and almost all the better for it."
"Almost?"
"There's some unsatisfied parties involved."
"Oh joy. Extraterrestrial ingrates," Ikharos drily mused. "My favourite."
"They might just be." The Stranger hunkered down beside him. "But we should talk shop. The anomaly."
"It's like Mars. Mercury. Io, Titan."
"Not quite," the Stranger told him. "It's a half-job."
"What..." Ikharos frowned. "What do you mean?"
"We're surfing on the edges where colliding philosophies meet. At the core of this argument there's a protest - and it takes the form of extreme temporal dilation."
"Related to yours?" Ikharos guessed.
The Stranger shook her head. "No. It's subject to change. We're just not in a position to see how long."
"So what's our plan?"
"We can't turn around. Even if it were physically possible, we shouldn't. The Scorn will succeed in rallying those inside to break free. Sol can't afford that. So as long as they dive," the Stranger said, watching him closely, "we dive."
"We dive," Ikharos dubiously repeated. "I'm not keen to let the egregore turn me inside out."
"It won't-"
"I'm Light, Elisabeth. I can hide it but it'll peek through eventually. The Dark'll search me out."
"There's ways around that," the Stranger said, "but we have to be quick."
"How?"
"Spare ourselves the eternity without drawing undue attention. Cryosleep."
Ikharos raised an eyebrow. "So there're still pods leftover?"
"Cargo pods. For imported flora and fauna."
"Ah. That's dangerous, you know."
"I can handle it," the Stranger vowed - then looked him over. "But... you have a point. We need to check, then."
"Check what?"
"If Xiān followed us down."
Ikharos' frown deepened. "I ordered her to fly back home."
"You well know that was never going to happen," the Stranger said. "She's as devoted to you as you are to her."
"It's foolish."
"It's who she is. It's who you are."
"What, foolish?"
"Maybe."
"Elisabeth," Ikharos said slowly, feeling the fear creeping back up on him. "She's brighter than I am. If the egregore doesn't come for us, the Scorn surely will."
"I can hide her."
"Like you did before?"
"Yes," the Stranger said stubbornly. "Like I have before."
"How do we do that?" Ikharos said with a grimace. "Reach her, I mean? If she's flying into the Dark-"
"We can attract her attention."
"With radio?"
"No. The Dark won't allow for it. But if we tether ourselves and go outside-"
"The Dark won't allow for that either!" Ikharos said with a vehemence he wasn't expecting; the fear was taking control, pushing the throttle full force. His nerves were afire and his blood must have been full of Stasis it was so cold. "We'd be at its mercy, utterly."
"If this were like the other worlds, maybe," the Stranger said carefully, watching him. "But here's a conflict of interests. It's risky, but it isn't suicide."
"I don't like it."
"It's that or let her plummet forever."
"I don't..." Ikharos groaned. "Okay! Okay, fine, fucking hell. Have it your way."
"Don't think I enjoy it any more than you do."
"Saying that doesn't make it sting any less." A thought struck him. "What about the Cabal? They're still out there, sinking like we are."
The Stranger shrugged. "They're farther out."
"Did we ever-"
"Yes."
"Then?"
The Stranger briefly offlined her optics and heaved a reluctant sigh. "There's a body aboard. In the elevator shaft you left behind."
Ikharos nodded slowly. "Auroxis, Legionary."
"If we can find a way to cut into whatever's left, we might be able to beam a message through the BattleNet via tachyon particles. Something small."
"What, and we can't do that for Xiān?"
"It's only with Xiān we can do it for the Cabal."
"... Okay. Okay," Ikharos sighed.
"But the body's still by the navigation deck, yes? That will be the first place the Scorn investigate, as soon as they tear through the remaining Frames and Exos."
"That's... less good," Ikharos decided.
"Precisely."
"... Dammit..."
"Are they worth it to you?" the Stranger asked. "We can go now, if you think it's that important."
Ikharos hesitated. He didn't like that he hesitated, but he did. "I think so," he concluded. "They're rough and they're... well, they're Cabal, but they were entrusted to me and they're loyal to the cause."
"Which cause is that?"
"The one where living people stay living and the nihilists pack up and go home."
"That's a fantasy," the Stranger remarked.
"Ho yeah, but it's an attractive one, right? Don't rightly have it in me to hold it 'gainst them."
The Stranger hummed. "It's hard being an optimist."
"And frustrating for the rest of us realists, but that's neither here nor there, eh?"
They moved. Nothing disturbed the botanical gardens while they were there, but Ikharos chalked that up to luck more than anything else. The hallways outside were quiet and growing darker by the minute. Even the gravity was beginning to fail; Ikharos felt lighter than he should have, his every step a stumbling recovery from the previous. They reached the elevator shaft quickly all the same, prompted to hurry by the overhanging threat of stalking ghouls. Ikharos levered open a door through sheer force and looked down.
"Thank the Traveler," he breathed, "we're above it."
"How far down?"
"Eleven floors, looks like. Navigation deck's not far above if I'm remembering right."
The Stranger brushed past him and peeked over the edge. "I'll go first," she said. "Grab what I can. You keep an eye out and make sure our route's clear."
"Which route is that?"
"There's another maintenance deck, small, two floors down. We can reach the outside from there without causing much ruckus."
"Fair." Ikharos nodded. He watched as she stepped out into open air and fell far enough that a human would have broken their legs - but the Stranger took it like a champ, simply bending her legs and allowing the force of the impact to fizzle and dissipate before it could snap her spine. Impact-dampeners, maybe. With a sprinkling of inbuilt suspension-springs. Only the best for Bray.
He waited until she gave him the all-clear - holding up an open hand and counting down from five from thumb to little finger - then stepped out himself. Ikharos caught the ledge with one hand before he could plummet for real and glanced down. He let go, grabbed hold of the next and did the same again. On the next floor he pulled himself up, pressed himself against the closed doors and forced his fingers in between the airtight seal, carving a space for them with degrading Void. Only once the exit was open, and he'd checked that the hallway beyond was clear, did he draw his sidearm and lean back out to give the Stranger a thumbs-up. They were clear.
She took up the Legionary's rifle, tossed it up to him, and then removed the Cabal's helmet. The pressure clasps hissed open and oil spurted up into the air, dissipating into a fine mist. Even from where he was Ikharos could catch the rancid stench of the stuff. The Stranger next grabbed the Auroxis' radio before nodding to herself and beginning the climb up to him. Ikharos kept watch until she'd reached his ledge, then set the slug rifle aside and offered her a hand. She paused, looked at it, then took it; Ikharos pulled her up. She was lighter than he was expecting. Different Exomind model, he had to remind himself. Different frame-type.
"Everything we need?" he asked.
"And more besides," the Stranger replied. She picked up the slug rifle and traded it with her pulse rifle on the magnetic lock at her back. The radio she clipped to her belt and the helmet she handed over to him. "Come on."
They moved silently through the ship. Ikharos led with his sidearm, the holographic sights of the gun linked directly to his sensorium, and he used it to peek around corners. So far they hadn't met with anything since the botanical gardens - no Frames, no ExSec Exos, no Scorn. All the while the anxiousness and dread burrowed a pit in his stomach, burning a hole through his chest. Nothing felt right. He was expecting a rockier trip. Something to put the Glykon to shame.
"Why this?" Ikharos asked after a time.
"Hm?" The Stranger didn't even look at him.
"Why've the Scorn put us in front of them? Why did they drive the Rancis ahead of them?"
"They're shielding themselves."
"From what? We're not being hit by anything."
The Stranger paused. "Exodus vessels are more sturdy than most," she explained, but she didn't sound sure of herself. "The Rancis will be feeling all the effects."
"And the Ketch behind it?"
"To a much lesser degree."
Ikharos exhaled through his nose. "We'll need to port them over."
"What, the Cabal?"
"Don't recall having packed crypopods back in Sol."
"There's other ways of sleeping forever," the Stranger mused.
Ikharos frowned. "I hope that's not a euphemism for what I think it is."
"It really isn't. Don't go jumping for the grimmest conclusion."
"What's your meaning, then?"
"It's up to you," the Stranger cryptically continued. "Whether or not you consider it worth the consequences, real or not."
"Do what?"
"Freeze them. Keep them in a state separate from the passing of time."
"Stasis," Ikharos concluded. He grimaced. "Not my first option."
"It's your only option, if you really want them alive."
"They won't agree to it. I wouldn't."
"More fool them," the Stranger said with a shrug. She continued onwards.
"Is there any other way?" Ikharos pressed. "Any way to cut this fall short?"
The Stranger gestured to the side, as if to indicate the darkness beyond the shell of the ship. "If you can convince them, then perhaps. I wouldn't count on it."
"You mean these Disciples."
"Sure."
Ikharos set his jaw and followed after her. Her unwillingness to reveal anything was starting to wear on him.
The maintenance deck came with an access port and a handy tether system, built for engineers to step out and work on repairs on the outside of the ship's hull. There were miles' worth of steel cabling to take advantage of and a tube along with it to supply air. The latter Ikharos had little use for; his biosuit and helm's limited air supply could give him another hour or so, and he wasn't exactly wearing anything compatible with the local life-support systems, so he settled for simply attaching the steel tether to his belt and stood by the threshold of the airlock.
The Stranger stayed behind. "They'll come, when they realize what we're doing," she explained. She handed him something. An electronic flare. "You'll still have to watch for Scorn out there - and more besides."
"Thanks," Ikharos muttered. He double-checked that his helmet was sealed tight. "If I grab her attention, then what?"
"Try to aim for a hangar. I'll meet you there."
"That'll be rough."
"Yes," the Stranger agreed, "it will.
Ikharos offered her a salute with the flare, then stepped inside.
"Good luck," she called after him. The airlock door slammed shut before he could air a response. The chamber emptied of air and gravity, sieving it all out and leaving him to flounder as the pressure built and built and built around him. Until...
It opened ahead of him.
And the tugging pressure became a forgotten memory.
The depths of the anomaly weren't dark. Not totally. Distant orange lightning flashed through the gloom, revealing a kaleidoscope of shifting colours and incomprehensible shapes; there were streaks of red and blue, great animated growths of decaying grey, pools of resonant fire. These all appeared in split second glimpses - alongside the visages of colossal flower petals unfolding, chunks of drifting worlds, a great unblinking eye with a distorted pupil. One flash, they were there. The next, they were gone or changed. It was a grand display of brutal chaos, the anarchy of a paracausal power manifesting in the absence of a planet.
Ikharos kicked out. The pressure around him... shifted. Suddenly he was onset by the feeling of a great constrictor snake around his chest, wracking him with tremoring squeezes. Invisible fingers parsed through his robes, his biosuit, his skin and tried to rearrange his insides with no consideration for the end result - warded off with only the dull, muted power of his Light. It stopped him in his tracks, left him curling up on himself, and then abated entirely. He looked around, bewildered and frightened. It came back again not a few moments later, the sensation crashing over him with a vengeance, and it lasted for minutes on end. Just when Ikharos thought his ribcage was going to give way did it fall away. The fear of it almost forced him back inside. But... no, he couldn't - Xiān was out there. He didn't have a choice in the matter. Ikharos unlocked the mechanism that kept the tether from spooling him any more cable and soared out.
The space in the anomaly was still vacuum, he soon realized. Just... denser, somehow. It was like using Deepsight to parse through a new wall in the Ascendant plane - but it lasted for far, far longer. It forced his air supply to thin to a trickle and filled his mind with rich delirium. Only the low call of the Void kept him stable, kept him calm. Ikharos continued outwards, away from the Exodus ship, and he activated the flare. The end of it glowed and split through the darkness, casting a beacon all across the colony ship below - and the ragged Ketch ferrying it along.
The very sight of the Scornship forced Ikharos' heartbeat to pick up. There was something distinctly wrong about it, capped with the soldered iron totems the Scorn so loved, and the patterns painted across its flaking hull were of a messy pus-yellow hue. Shadows scurried along its length. Shadows crawled along where the prow had lodged into the hull of the Exodus ship and across the shell of the larger vessel.
Shadows headed for him.
Ikharos pulled his sidearm free of its holster and took aim. They were still some miles off, easily, but they were definitely headed his way. No doubt about that; the flare was bright enough that the Cabal of the Rancis probably saw it, wherever they were. He zoomed in the holographic sights, aligned it with the head of a Stalker crawling across a field of gleaming silver and pressed the trigger once. It took a half-second, but the Scorn's skull exploded into meaty chunks and purplish-blue mist. Ikharos aimed for another-
And the pressure-wave came back. He doubled over in himself, suddenly unable to differentiate between what was a hallucination and what was simply his sensorium's feed. His vision swam and, despite everything, he swore he could see stars in the choking dark of the anomaly, even when he closed his eyes.
"You can't shoot them all," the red-hued phantom at his back whispered. Her chin scraped over his shoulder and settled there; claws, sharp and long, curled around the bicep of his opposite arm. "Look at them. Swarming at the mere promise of a kill. Your Light is familiar to them. It's hated. After all you've inflicted unto them, I'm not surprised."
Ikharos powered through the pain, the daze. He shrugged her off and forced himself to stare through his sidearm's scope. It was an unconventional thing, his weapon. Large and powerful; more handcannon than not. A prize for patient games. For putting on a show. Something the Nightmare behind him would have loved to see. He found a pair of Screebs racing below, their claws cutting grip-holds into the hull beneath them, and he fired at the closer of the two. The ensuing eruption took out the second and that next explosion claimed a trio of headless Ravagers.
But she was right. There were so many more after that, surging from the Ketch like a kicked anthill. Too many. He didn't have enough ammunition to even put a dent in them.
"They're going to cut you loose," the witch whispered into his ear. "You'll tumble through this place forevermore."
A crack emanated from the gloom behind him, far from the ships. It sounded like two moons were crashing together. A grand wailing moan followed it; some leviathan creature deep within the dark.
"You could spare them the effort," she insidiously insinuated. "No point in prolonging it. It will be good for you. Perspective always is, isn't that what you say? It will help you see things the way I do. Trapped. And glad for it."
"I'll kill you," Ikharos darkly promised. That old threat. He'd thrown it her way too many times to count.
"I love it when you do."
She brushed past him, whisper-soft and razor-sharp. Her claws danced across the steel cable. Her skull, midnight-bone flanked by ivory horns, bent down for closer look. Her eyes glowed with ancient malice. She looked back at him and in that moment Ikharos thought he knew what she was going to do.
"Don't," he warned.
"Not I," the witch purred - and drifted out of the way. Below, far below, something gangly and pulling on a massive flaming censer like a kite clung by the airlock from which his cable began. Ikharos saw it glance up, imagined he could see the shifting faces amidst the rotting flesh and cracked exoskeleton, and he watched as it closed a hand around the base of the cable. The motion sent a tremor riding up the length of it.
The Locus of Communion tightened its grip and tugged. The tether came free. It let go.
And Ikharos couldn't do a thing.
"Oops," the witch chuckled.
Ikharos acted quickly. He unclipped the tether from his belt, waited until the pressure-wave had passed, then called on his Light. Great Solar wings sprouted from his shoulders, smoking and bright, and he beat them thrice - just to put him on a path back down to the ship below. He allowed them to extinguish after but a moment of use, hoping it had gone unnoticed by larger parties.
And everything fell quiet.
Worryingly so.
The anomaly was silent. The lightning ceased to arc and strike. Even the groan of whatever lifeform was swimming out there petered out. No, Ikharos decided with a heavy sigh. It hadn't gone unnoticed.
A shape hurtled out of the dark for him, sharp-nosed and flickering as its stealth-sheath met with phantasmal interference, and the Shadow Trespass slowed under Ikharos. He landed softly against it, his hands and knees pressing against the familiar firm feel of its reinforced hull. The metal there was scarred and scoured, scraped raw by the energies of the wracking anomaly around them, but it was still a-piece. It was still intact. And Xiān-
He could feel her. Inside. Bright as a star and infinitely more precious.
"What the hell were you thinking?!" Ikharos shouted, worry propelling his anger to new heights.
"Hiya, PLEASE don't be mad," Xiān shrilly pleaded. "I couldn't leave you!" They dipped towards the Exodus ship.
Not fast enough.
Un-space shifted around them, the powers that were moving to catch a glimpse of the Light that dared trespass upon their domain. The massive eye Ikharos had spied earlier opened up in the murky darkness to his right, half a solar system away and larger than a gas giant. It narrowed and shrank down to the size of a continent, closing in on him, and Ikharos all but glimpsed his reflection in the sheening black of its terrible, terrible pupil - cast in a red light by the flare he still clung to. An abrupt bout of strange pain assailed him, pressure like before but instead of reaching through his flesh it needled through his mind.
everything
was
agony
he
couldn't
think
it
was
too
much
The eye blinked. The connection severed. Ikharos sprawled against the Shadow Trespass and painted for breath. There were things out there, where once there had been only Darkness. Great, ancient, powerful things. The space beneath them, one the other side of the Exodus ship, shifted as if some great serpent was rousing. Ivory bone and violet scales rose out of the shadow like so many shark fins.
Above, a grotesque mouthless skull pressed out into broad view and glared down at him with two eyes, four eyes, six - each one of them burning with a cold, cold fire. Icy mist gathered and ran in plumes from its nostrils like steam; crystal-plated horns framed its great crested skull like a primal crown. It was something hideous and cruel, something old and ruthless, something that wanted him dead. There! Teeth, flashing below where its chin should have been, long and sharp and of a glittering obsidian hue. It opened its maw as if to strike and its head lowered for him, carved from smoke and molten rock.
Light. Not like his but the causal kind - in appearance, anyways. A great blooming radiant display cut through the chaos, split it apart like a lance. The nature of the anomaly rose and cracked over him, around him, shattering apart at the seams. A spear, silver and tall, fired through the space by the Exodus ship and scored a line across the six-eyed skull's cheek, biting into bone. The beast above snarled so loud Ikharos' eardrums almost shattered there and then. The spear retracted, fled, retreated
Something else replaced it. A scythe, built of tarnished gold and red-pink energy. It hooked onto the material of the crushing anomaly...
And ripped it apart.
Gravity took hold. Ikharos blinked, scrabbled for a grip - and lost it, sliding helplessly down the side of the Shadow Trespass. It happened too quick for Xiān to adjust their flight; he tipped over the edge, tumbled into open air and the Jumpship sped onwards.
Huh, Ikharos thought. He didn't have a better word to truly encapsulate his many colourful feelings in that moment. Confusion seemed like the most natural one, given that the sky he was hurtling through was blue and - yes, there, a cloud, but that below, wait, now it was above him. He twisted around. Right. There. A world. Blue and green just like Earth. Nothing was the same shape, but the colours at least were familiar. Different continents, different oceans - all rising up to meet him. The Stranger had been right, then. A paradise. Just... coming up on him a little too fast.
"Xiān?" Ikharos whispered. He couldn't even hear himself over the howling of wind as it sped past him.
"Ikharos!" she cried, her voice slamming into him through his helmet's speakers. Ikharos winced; he'd have to moderate that later. Now, though...
"Please catch me," he urged her.
"Coming around, hang in there!"
"Okay," he said, all the while thinking what a poor choice of words. What the hell else am I supposed to do?
"Oh crap!" Xiān yelped. "And, uh, don't look up!"
Ikharos looked up. "Huh," he said. Definitely the best word for it. "Why is the Exodus above us?"
"It's burning up!"
No, it wasn't. Well, it was, but it was mostly just shattering apart. Ikharos watched, transfixed by morbid interest, as the ragged end of the Exodus ship began to split open - and the Ketch behind it peeked through, slicing right through it with gravity's help. The slimmer warship bisected the larger colony ship apart like a hot knife through butter, heedless of the damage it sustained in doing so. But that-
"Elisabeth," Ikharos gasped. "Elisabeth!"
His radio crackled. "I'm fine," he heard the Stranger shout. "What happened?!"
"We're through!"
"Where are you?"
"Falling! Elisabeth, get out of there!"
"I'm-" She was cut off. No further response.
"Elisabeth!" Ikharos called again. "Fuck, Xiān, we have to-"
"Oh no," Xiān whimpered. "Stealth field's out. Stealth field's out! They can see us!"
The Shadow Trespass re-entered his field of view, diving after him. Behind it, Ikharos could still spy the Ketch. And it was turning to engage.
"Xiān," Ikharos said. "Dip to the right."
"What?!"
"To the right," he repeated. The Shadow Trespass tilted out of the way. Ikharos raised his hand to the sky, aimed it at the Ketch and loosed a crackling beam of concentrated Arc. It tore through the air and lanced along the Ketch's side, melting steel and crumpling the tip of its already fractured prow. Giving them a bloody nose, he mused. His Chaos Reach petered out and he was left with the sight of the Ketch smoking at its front and still chugging after them.
"Elisabeth," Ikharos calmly said, enunciating each word, "if you can hear me, get out now. Scorn are coming for me, but you're still falling too. I don't think we're going to be able to fetch you."
The Trespass caught up, gently sloping under Ikharos until it had caught him. He clung to the front of it, over the cockpit, and thought go.
Xiān must have heard, because the Jumpship shot off.
And the Ketch soared after them.
AN: Huge thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!
Presage was my favourite mission and the Captain's Log my favourite lorebook. Can you tell?