Ghost and the Shell
All humanity mourned the day I was born. The Traveler, humanity's patron and champion against the darkness, created me and my fellows on the day it died. I never knew my creator. I know only what anyone else can see as they look upon the Traveler's sphere hovering protectively over the last human city even in death.
We were born with a single purpose—to use the light of the Traveler within us to find and assist a guardian. No, that's not quite right; not a guardian, the guardian. My guardian. We wandered Earth, we wandered the nearby colonies on Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Luna. And I spent a really, really long time searching. As I saw the others find their guardians, and as the centuries went by, I wondered if I would ever find mine.
And then, one day, I did.
ACT I: Nothing Left But The Fall
Chapter 1: A Guardian Rises
"—ardian? Guardian? Eyes up Guardian."
She opened her eyes. She was lying on the ground staring up at the blue sky as white puffy clouds slowly rolled along their way in the golden light of early evening.
She did not know where she was. She did not know how she got here. What is going on?
"It worked. You're alive! You don't know how long I've been looking for you."
A machine hovered into view that positively bubbled with energy as it looked down at her. It was a small thing, metal points rotating around a single glowing orb. She climbed up to a sitting position and noticed her arms for the first time. They were . . . hard. Cold. Metal.
Quickly, frantically, she patted her forearms, shoulders, her face . . . it was all dead metal. She was metal wrapped up in a frayed flak jacket. And there, printed on her left arm, was a designation: Whisper-0. Whisper did not know what it meant. All she knew was that she had a name. In panic, she reached back in her mind, trying to find any memory, any anything that marked her as her. And there, somewhere just beyond reach, were feelings. Pain. Anger. And above all, an aching, all-encompassing regret. But . . . regret for what? Why?
She struggled, reached further, and even that small vestige slipped away.
"What am I? And who are you?" Her voice was unfamiliar.
The floating machine bobbed up and down. "I'm a ghost. Actually, now I'm your ghost. And you . . . well, you were an Exo a long time ago. You've been dead a long time. So you're going to see a lot of things you won't understand. But this is Fallen territory. We aren't safe here. I have to get you to the City."
The thought of a threat brought focus, and she gratefully set aside the rising panic to climb to her feet and scan her surroundings. She was standing on some sort of road, its ancient asphalt cracked and overrun with weeds peeking through a light dusting of snow. There were hundreds, even thousands of rusted-out hulks of ground vehicles jamming the road, all facing her, going towards something behind her.
She turned and took a startled step backwards. The vehicles had been heading towards a staggeringly huge . . . she didn't know what it was. The perimeter was guarded by a stupendous wall. The road seemed to lead to a heavily fortified entrance.
And yet, despite being guarded like a fortress, beyond that wall, visible even above that wall, was something quite different. Huge launchpads towered over the wall, still laden with ancient, crumbling starships. And those launchpads were surrounded in turn by control towers, hangars, and more domes and buildings she couldn't identify.
An icy shiver ran through her. Something terrible had happened her. For a split second she could almost see thousands of civilians fleeing in terror towards that wall, racing to reach the starships that would never launch.
And I died, right here. She tried to pin down how she knew that, but it slipped away.
"We won't survive long out in the open like this. Let's get inside the wall. Hold still." The machine, the ghost, floated down to her hand and abruptly vanished. Don't worry, I'm still with you. We need to move. Fast.
She heard the crunch of boots on snow down the road behind her and the harsh mutter of commands in a language she didn't understand.
Time to go. She started walking, then jogging, then running in smooth, powerful strides. The surprised sense of wonder at her strength and speed quickly morphed into anxious worry over exactly how she came to have it, or how she didn't mind the cold or snow, which she quickly suppressed before the fear could paralyze her.
The gateway approached quickly as she dashed past and over dozens of burned-out husks of vehicles. The gateway itself yawned open, a dark and unknown interior flanked by the hollow shells of tanks destroyed centuries ago. The gateway itself had been sealed, but the cold, brittle steel had been cracked open by some long-ago explosion, leaving just enough space to clamber awkwardly through.
Whisper heard the alien screeching approaching quickly just as she made it inside. She scampered forward blindly, trying to stay ahead of those alien cries, dodging through rusted metal corridors heavy with cracked pipes and long-since disintegrated wiring so endemic in a major industrial site. What was surprising, however, was how . . . clean everything was. While dust was everywhere, there was no debris, no wreckage, despite the fight that had once happened here. Had someone been reusing it? Stealing it?
She jumped in surprise when the ghost spoke once more; it seemed to be coming from inside her head. I think we've lost them for the moment, but there are lots more of them around. We need to find you a weapon before the Fallen find us.
Whisper nodded and kept moving down the narrow corridor, which grew dark quickly as they left the daylight behind them. Just as it became too dim to see where she was going the ghost reappeared, its eye glowing like a flashlight, illuminating the path. They pressed on, moving as quickly and quietly as possible until the hardened concrete floor gave way to a grated metal catwalk.
She heard sounds, too, echoing around her. They must have moved into a very large, very open space for sound to bounce around like that, seemingly from every direction at once.
Quiet, the machine whispered in her head, echoing her own thoughts. They're right above us. Whisper tiptoed forward out onto the grating of an overhang, but in the oppressive darkness, she couldn't make out anything at all.
Hang tight. Fallen thrive in the dark. We won't. We need more light. I'll see what I can do. And just like that, the ghost took off, leaving her alone in the pitch black. She was of two minds about the idea of turning on the lights. It would be nice to see, but it would also let all of these . . . Fallen, whatever they were, know just what part of this enormous facility they were in. And that was assuming the ghost could find a working generator in the first place! On the other hand, the lone light of the ghost while wandering around in the dark would be a beacon pointed straight at her.
Either way, there wasn't much she could do about it now but hunker down and hope that the ghost's mutterings weren't actually audible while she listened to those things clamber all around her in the dark.
Hmm, another one of those hardened military systems, and a few centuries of entropy, working against me. A loud crash echoed through the chamber, followed by a grinding sound, then a hum, and a series of huge floodlights flickered and cranked on.
Whisper found herself in a huge, narrow chamber extending even further than she could see, while massive support columns at least a dozen meters wide leaned out to buttress what must have been the outer wall. More pressingly, at least a half-dozen alien voices roared out as one.
They're coming for us! The ghost darted back to her side and shined its light on a gated fence now rumbling open. This way. Look, there's a rifle. Grab it!
She charged through the opening and stooped to pick up a battered, ancient weapon and a handful of magazines laying next to the remains of a skeleton. A Khvostov 7G-02, some part of her mind registered. The matte black iteration of an assault rifle hadn't been fired, much less cleaned, in centuries. Did the ghost expect this thing to work?
Here, let me look at it. The ghost scanned the weapon quickly while she slid the magazines into empty harnesses around her waist, and it seemed like it was doing something to the rifle, then—There, it should work now. I hope you know how to use that thing.
She didn't have time to question as another creature roared, closer this time, and the auto rifle snapped up into position at her shoulder without conscious thought. She moved forward briskly, legs half-bent to absorb the up-and-down movement and provide a steadier firing platform, and part of her wondered how she could possibly know all of this. But as panicked as that part of her was, it knew better than to distract her now.
She rounded a corner and there was an alien, no, two of them. The first rushed at her with two large blades, while the second brought some sort of ranged weapon to bear. She slid left, aim tracking the armed one, and pulled the trigger. Against all odds the weapon fired, and the fully automatic rifle hammered at her shoulder. The alien took three shots tracking up the sternum and one to the head, as the surprising recoil drove her aim upward, and the creature collapsed in a heap, its cry abruptly cut off.
The other closed the distance with surprising speed and slashed at her stomach. She clenched, anticipating pain as her rifle shifted too slowly, but the blades seemed to bounce off some sort of force field. The creature howled in rage and swung again, but her rifle was ready, and it thundered in the tight confines.
Whisper breathed heavily, more than a little shocked by the sudden violence on top of everything else. She needed to move, to break contact, to keep from thinking too much while still in danger, but she couldn't help but stare at these . . . creatures.
They were humanoid, of a sort. Two lightly armored legs gave it basic mobility. Its torso, though . . . its armored breastplate held not two, but four openings for arms. And while there were four arm sockets, the lower set of arms were missing. Unless she was much mistaken, from the clean breaks, the arms had been cut off. The torso was protected by a light breastplate that left the neck unprotected. It wore a sealed face mask with some sort of feeder hose trailing down to its back. The mask protected four glowing eyes, but it was a breather, not a full atmospheric helmet, because it didn't cover a shock of hair dark on emerging straight up from the top of the creature's head.
The other creature seemed to be of the same species, but it was physically larger, almost her own size. Its armor was heavier, more polished, and instead of knives it held a larger, two-handed energy rifle of some kind. Peculiarly, all four of its arms were extended for use. If it had hair, it was hidden beneath a fully sealed environmental helmet. The armor was wrapped in scraps of red cloth with a sigil that looked like a stylized white sword pointing down on a red field.
"What are these things?"
Her ghost reappeared, twisting nervously. These are Fallen. The one with two arms is a dreg, the lowest member of their society. The other is a vandal, who has earned the right to regrow and use all its limbs. They are scavengers, mostly, moving from place to place and stealing everything they can get their hands on. Come on, we need to keep moving.
"And that force field—you're doing that?"
The ghost spun in place. Technically, it's a combined effort between me and your armor. It holds the initial charge, and I recharge it. And it really is time to go now.
Whisper ejected the mostly spent magazine from her rifle, placing it in the ammo straps at her waist and replacing it with a fresh one before cranking back the bolt to chamber the first round. Then she paused, hesitating, and stooped to grab the Fallen's blade. It crackled with energy as she slid sheathed it into another easily accessible harness slot and moved forward grimly.
It didn't take long for her to run into another group of Fallen, and after all the gunfire, she hadn't caught them off-guard. Two vandals and three dregs. The two-armed dregs rushed in, a knife in one hand and an energy pistol in the other. She gave ground, trying to keep pipes and ruined machinery between her and the vandals while they lined up their rifles.
The Khvostov bucked in her hands as she put down the runners in short bursts, but then the Fallen rifles fired. Their strange blue projectiles were slow, but they made up for it by tracking her. Breaking line of site was still effective, but she hadn't been expecting the rounds to follow her around the corner, and two blue energy bolts slapped into her arm and detonated in a crackle of electricity. Her shield held, if barely, but a strange diagnostic feedback very like pain spiked up her arm.
She reloaded quickly and burst out from cover again, trusting her faster slugs to take down the Fallen and get back behind cover before their arc projectiles could get to her. Her rifle blazed again, and it was done.
The hallway was certainly the worse for the wear, however. The walls had been scored by her rifle bullets and pockmarked where the Fallen's explosive rounds had detonated. The Fallen have a tighter hold on this place then I thought. Just a little bit further. Let's hope there's something left out there.
Whisper was about to move on, following the ghost's advice, when she noticed the machine scanning each Fallen in turn. "What are you doing?"
Looking for glimmer, of course. She blinked, a purely habitual motion linked to surprise. Oh, right. Glimmer is a special type of reprogrammable matter. It has all sorts of uses, and we use it as a form of currency. I'm using some of what I find to refill your empty magazines with bullets and storing the rest.
That . . . well, that seemed to make sense; the idea of using something as valuable as reprogrammable matter to fashion bullets seemed criminally wasteful, but it was useful. But instead of wading into that quagmire of relative utility, not to mention trying to figure out who the "we" was that ran an entire economy, she shrugged and pressed forwards, following the ghost's directions through the wall. And just a few minutes later she was out into the open.
The vista was impressive as she stood at the end of an internal courtyard. Entrances to smaller structures built into the wall itself rayed off from the courtyard, all in the shadow of massive starships, big enough to carry thousands of colonists . . . or soldiers.
This is the Cosmodrome. There's got to be something we can fly out of here.
Unfortunately, they weren't alone. Several Fallen huddled around a large six-legged combat vehicle with a hole blown in its side. The walker was a heavy assault vehicle of some sort, with a large main cannon and at least two secondary weapons mounted on a red sphere at its core, distinct from the dull brown of the rest of the body. The Fallen were quick off the mark, and one of them fired a signal flare into the late afternoon sky. She had just raised her rifle when the sky seemed to ripple, and with a sudden roar of engines a large, ungainly-looking starship slid into view. It was startlingly big to be that deep into atmosphere, and shaped like a long, narrow cone, except were large bulbous engines seemed to have been welded onto it, giving it a ramshackle appearance. Stealth fields?
Ghost was more concerned with their presence than how they'd gotten there. Fallen ships this close to the surface!? I see a hangar to your right. Move!
She slid right along the wall to keep the Fallen from getting around behind her while her rifle spat fire back at them. The Fallen ship opened what looked to be docking ports and handful of smaller Fallen vessels emerged. These heavily armored, short-range vehicles eased to a hover near the tank, large exterior weapons swiveling to locate targets, while small portals opened beneath it. Fallen reinforcements disembarked, dropping the last two meters to the ground.
The Fallen's strange shock rifles struggled to track her movement as she opened the distance between theme, but her weapon wasn't faring much better. Autorifles aren't precision instruments, and she had a much easier time taking out the dregs wildly rushing at her then the vandals, who kept their distance and darted behind cover. Unfortunately, some of the vandals were carrying a new weapon, and she winced as a white-hot, molten chunk of metal sizzled past her face, leaving a trace of ionized atmosphere in its wake.
She kept moving, using suppressing fire to keep their heads down while she focused on finding cover. More Fallen ships were arriving now, gathering to the flare, and disembarking more than just Fallen. Drones, hovering on two rear-mounted jets and armed with an underslung turret, were deploying. Watch out for the shanks! We need to get back into cover.
Whisper kept moving toward the opening in the wall the ghost had spotted, emblazed with Hangar Bay in white paint, and trying to keep as much distance as she could from the Fallen. There, get inside! Hold the gate while I work on the controls.
Staying put was the last thing she wanted to do, but there were far too many Fallen out there to have a hope of outrunning them all. She backed into the gateway, taking cover against the wall, and fired at any Fallen she could see while ghost scanned the decrepit gate controls.
The Fallen were starting to get their act together. The drones, or shanks as the ghost called them, would move out first, drawing her fire and trying to pin her down behind cover while the others leapfrogged closer. It was slow, but they were making steady progress at the cost of the occasional shank. There, got it! The gate started to grind its way closed, and the Fallen saw it. They burst out of cover in a rush, firing from the hip. She ducked down behind a shattered pipe and poked out the gun, firing blindly at them. Her magazine clicked empty again, and a second later the gate clanged shut.
Good job. I'm picking up signs of an old jumpship. It could be our ticket out of here.
Whisper was in favor of getting anywhere that wasn't here.
Another handful of dregs rushed her from deeper inside the building, but in the tight confines of the corridor they stood no chance against the auto rifle. She pressed on through concrete tunnels until they opened into a small hangar, and there was what she hoped was a jumpship.
It was smaller than she expected, not much more than a flattened aerodynamic point connected to a large engine on each side. Its only weapons were two underslung anti-personnel machine guns. The craft hung from anchoring cables and looked like it had seen better centuries, with a chipped and faded orange-on-black paint scheme. Strangely, it didn't seem to have much in the way of a cockpit, not to mention any way to get into the thing.
More pressingly, it was also covered in Fallen. A lot of Fallen. For a second they stared at each other, her with her weapon, and the Fallen with bits of pried-off starship in their hands. Then there was a mad scramble.
Whisper slid around the perimeter, auto rifle bellowing as she cut down swarming dregs. She kept on the move, trying not to get swamped, and almost bumped into a humongous Fallen. He, or it, or whatever it was, stood almost two meters high, with huge muscles keeping it agile despite heavy body armor and an imposing helmet with spiky protrusions.
She dropped to her knees, turning her momentum into a slide past its outstretched arms, and turned the auto rifle on it, only to see her bullets sprang off an energy shield. It cried out to the other Fallen and snaked its way back into cover behind some old empty packing crates just as the shield fell. She took the momentary reprieve to regain her feet and dart away again. She kept an eye on those crates while she finished off the other dregs, but the captain didn't emerge.
The last dreg went down and she started to turn when the captain made his move. Or rather, he didn't really move at all—one instant he was behind cover, and the next he seemed to condense in on himself and teleported right beside her in a flash of blue light. She stepped backwards, trying to bring the rifle into play, but it was too long a weapon for such close quarters, and one of the four gauntleted hands clamped onto it, forcing the muzzle up and away.
She pulled the trigger anyway, sending rounds blistering into the ceiling, and the Fallen roared in anguish as the white-hot barrel burned through its protective gloves, but it latched onto her with two more hands with an iron grip while the fourth pulled out a wickedly long shock blade. Whisper struggled desperately, trying to break free, to get out, but the knife slashed in, driving up through her armpit and deep inside.
Damage indicators erupted and she screamed as the blade twisted deeper, and everything went black— and reformed again at the entrance to the room, looking at the Fallen who clutched at empty air. What the—
The captain saw her and screeched in rage, turning to attack again, and Whisper reacted on instinct. The auto rifle raised and round after round hammered the Fallen. It shuddered under the barrage, trying to fight its way through the impacts against its shields, but they collapsed and her fire scored deep craters into body armor.
The magazine clicked empty, and the Fallen tried one last rush to get on her as she reloaded, but she'd gotten a good piece of its leg and it was too slow, and the captain gave out one final cry and crumpled.
What… what just happened? What was that?
All right! Let me see if I can get us out of here.
She refocused on the ghost, now eagerly examining the wrecked ship while talking to itself.
It's been here a while. It hasn't made a jump in centuries. We're lucky the Fallen haven't completely picked it clean.
"Look, ghost, I'm a little overwhelmed right now. Just tell me, can it get us out of here, or not?"
The ghost turned to look at her, its sides rotating excitedly. I can make it work.
And then, just like at the generator, it turned and vanished. Disintegrated itself? Whatever it did, it seemed to have merged with the ship itself, and the battered old spacecraft came to life at its touch. The engines hummed, spinning up through a startup sequence, while lights blinked as the secondary systems came online.
The jumpship started to lift, at first taking the strain off the restraints, then pulling against them until they snapped one after another. Okay, it's not going to break orbit, but it just might get us to the City. Now—about that transmat…
Whisper was about to ask what a transmat might be, but the sharp chatter of more Fallen jerked her around instead, raising her rifle. There, at least two more vandals and another captain, already calling out for more reinforcements.
Bringing you in!
What?
And, abruptly, she wasn't outside the ship anymore. Instead, she sat behind the controls of the jumpship. And while there was no apparent canopy, she could still somehow see through the hull of the ship itself where the canopy should have been, where the captain and the vandals were shouting frantically and starting to bring their weapons to bear.
Without any input from Whisper, the ship started to rise. Was the ghost flying it? We can come back for them when you're ready. Let's get you home.
The ship's engines roared, Whisper was pressed firmly back into the pilot's chair, and the ship roared off into the sky. Yet even then, she thought she caught sight of some sort of figure on top of the Cosmodrome itself, watching as the jumpship soared into the darkened sky.
A/N: Welcome to a new story of mine! The planned schedule is to update each Sunday. We'll see how that goes. Let me know what you think!
