Chapter 6: Warmind
Whisper zoomed across the half-frozen landscape on a sparrow, the small craft's anti-gravity system keeping the agile machine hovering off the ground while the drive engine at the rear propelled it forward. She leaned forward over the sparrow, right hand goosing the throttle and feet easing on the pedals, twitching ailerons to swerve the craft to the right past yet another rusted out hulk.
For Whisper it was love at first ride—all her initial reluctance when Amanda Holliday had explained the concept evaporated the moment she put her hands on the controls. She smiled as the angular, black and white javelin cut through the crisp afternoon air. The light snowfall had ceased, and the sun was even peeking out, lighting up the scene before her.
Alright, we're getting close.
Whisper eased off the throttle and glided to a stop, then hopped off. She gave the Sparrow S-10 an affectionate pat as Blabbermouth transmatted it away into storage, then took another look around.
The Forgotten Shore lived up to its name. Off in the distance she could see the ocean, with gentle waves lapping at the rocky beach. The water level must have dropped significantly, because the old docks stood in slowly rotting ruins a hundred or so meters back, surrounded by the hulks of old ships. No wonder the Fallen liked this place—lots to scavenge.
I'm picking up the signal from Skywatch, but it's bouncing around all over the place. It wasn't doing this earlier—they must have set up signal repeaters or amplifiers nearby to mask their location.
"They probably know that someone hit Skywatch if they're taking security measures now. I wonder why they don't turn off the signal altogether?"
Only one way to find out.
Whisper moved forwards cautiously. Numerous Fallen patrols were in the area, which she did her best to avoid. Blabber kept her pointed in the right direction weaving through the derelicts. She did have to fight through a small contingent guarding the amplifier itself, but she'd learned how to deal with small patrols—sniper rifle to take down the captain and a vandal or two, then move in with the SMG while the survivors scattered.
The amplifier itself was a bulky thing, larger than her, and obviously repurposed by the Fallen from whatever it was originally intended for. Blabber emerged from hiding to give it a closer look.
Give me a second… some kind of distorted signal is coming through. Not Fallen. I'm taking it offline now… there. I've traced it. It was bouncing around really loud signals to mask another one, back… at Skywatch? But why send the signal all the way out here?
Whisper grabbed Blabber, transmatted the Sparrow S-10 back into existence, and jumped on, gunning the engine and rocketing through the wreckage and back towards Skywatch. "It was a distraction," she shouted over the sound of the engine and rushing wind, "to throw us off their tracks!"
They made their way as quickly as possible back to the area, which took nearly thirty minutes. Long for a sparrow ride, but too short to be faster by jumpship. The longest possible travel time, and she was starting to think that wasn't a coincidence. She moved aggressively, homing in on the previously masked signal as they went. As they approached it became clear—the signal was coming from the Terrestrial Complex just across from the Lunar Complex where they'd encountered the Hive.
And to think, it was here all along!
As the sparrow faded away Whisper hesitated. This wasn't scouting and observing—this was an assault, something she wasn't really equipped or ready for. Still… the House of Devils had committed a lot of resources to their charade out on the Forgotten Shore. They probably didn't want to draw attention and risk blowing the entire operation by putting too much firepower inside the place itself. And, more worryingly, that trick with the signals wasn't something that would stand up forever—it was a delaying tactic, which suggested they didn't need much more time for whatever they were planning.
She grimaced. "Let's do it."
The Terrestrial Complex was locked, of course, but Blabber made short work of it. Thankfully, the entryway was empty as she peaked inside. She crept forward quietly, making her way through empty room after empty room.
Do you think this is the right place?
Whisper made an angry cut-off gesture—she could hear something up ahead. She crept forward slowly and peaked around the corner. Down a long hallway were two captains and a dozen or so vandals spaced loosely around two Fallen. Those two were… different. For starters, they had only light, form-fitting armor and didn't seem to have any weapons at all. They stood over a large computer console, all four arms working the controls quickly.
Fallen civilians? They had at least enough standing to use all their arms, which meant they were important. Whatever they were, they were up to no good tapping into the Golden Age communication network for the moon. She considered carefully. The captains were the biggest threat with their shrapnel launchers—those would be devastating in such close confines. She pulled out her sniper rifle and took aim.
Her first shot was a clean kill on the closer captain, punching through its shields for a headshot. Her second was only a second behind, but the captain was quick, and it ricocheted off the armor on its arm, too oblique and angle to penetrate. Still, it took down the shields, so she dropped the rifle and pulled out the SMG.
Gathering her light, she threw a grenade at the vandals, putting more effort into not destroying the console than into hitting them, and turned towards the captain. Even through the pain of an obviously broken arm, the captain didn't hesitate and fired at her in the same moment she fired at him. The shrapnel launcher impacted with enough force to physically knock her backwards a pace and shredded her shields.
Her fire walked a line of bullets up the Fallen's torso, punching through armor, while her last shot shattered the mechanical ether apparatus over his face, sending a spray of a gaseous white ether everywhere. Something exploded behind her and she staggered forwards, shrapnel tearing into her back, and—
…
The passage was narrow through hard-packed dirt, soaked to mud, then baked dry over and over again across the centuries. She was probably the first person to walk here in just as long, and she paused to wipe the sweat off her forehead and tried to imagine what things were like for that last person. She knew a lot about them as a people, of course, but individually—
…
The room at the heart of the terrestrial complex appeared before her once more. Both captains were down, as well as a handful of vandals, but there was no sign of the civilians. She moved in quickly, SMG blazing, to wipe out the rest of the Fallen. As the last fell she stopped to think. What was that? Are those memories?
Come on, let's see what the Fallen were up to.
Whisper shook her head, putting the thoughts on hold for a moment, and moved closer to the machine console which was, somewhat miraculously, still intact.
The Fallen are trying to access the system, but something is fighting back. This will take some time. Watch out, a few of them got away, and they'll probably call for reinforcements.
Ugh, this was not her strong suit. She considered her options. The room itself was a mess thanks to the recent fight. Still, there was some larger debris, the wreck of a table, some broken chairs. She hauled them over to the entry way and set up a rough barricade. She'd just gotten the larger pieces in place when she heard the warbling war cry of the Fallen.
She pulled up the sniper rifle and crouched behind her makeshift cover. The clip size was limited, but the first four Fallen around that corner were not going to enjoy the experience.
Three dregs burst into view at a dead sprint trying to rush her. The sniper rifle hammered her shoulder twice, instantly killing the first two, but then the third was on her. She dropped the rifle once more and hopped back from a wild swing with a shock blade, then stepped in with her own blade. The dreg went down, but vandals were already moving. She emptied the SMG clip into them then pulled on the light and threw a grenade to cover herself as she reloaded.
The grenade erupted in white and purple light as she rammed the clip him just in time to open fire on even more Fallen, pushing them back around the corner.
The cries faded as they fell back, awaiting more reinforcements.
Okay, I've pulled out everything they managed to steal and I'm wiping this terminal. They didn't get much—kept hitting an active firewall. Old Earth, Russian…
Whisper felt a shiver, run through her as a distant memory triggered. The Tyrant. Blabber was still speaking, unaware of her momentary distraction.
So the legends are true? A warmind did survive the Collapse. Rasputin faced the darkness and survived. And he's protecting something here in the Cosmodrome. We have to find a way to reach him!
"First, we have to get out of here."
Right. Let me unlock the side passages; that should let us avoid most of them. Coming! Blabbermouth shimmered out of view and Whisper raised her SMG once more.
…
Their first stop was the hangar, where they returned the borrowed sparrow. "So, how did you like it?"
Whisper smiled at the memory. "I loved it. The speed, the maneuverability…"
Amanda grinned back at her. "I recognize another kindred spirit. If you've got the glimmer, I'll give you a discount and you can have one all of your own. With a little practice, you might consider entering the Sparrow Racing League."
"There's a racing league?!"
"I knew I liked you. Now, I know the Vanguard doesn't give new guardians much in the way of spending money, but these options should be in your price range. For starters, there's…" Amanda guided her through the low-end options, and in the end, she opted for the S-20 Nomad, a grey and white machine that boosted harder, braked harder, and was sturdier than the Sparrow S-10.
After providing the glimmer, Amanda put about half of it into a replication engine along with a few custom parts, and set it to work manufacturing Whisper a sparrow of her very own. While they waited, Amanda asked about her maiden voyage.
"Well, it didn't go exactly how I expected it to. I ended up chasing after a distraction, then racing back and running straight into a bunch of Fallen. I feel a little bad about that wiping them out."
Amanda's excited grin immediately transformed into an angry scowl. "You feel bad? I hope you killed all of those damned monsters."
Whisper paused, taken aback by the ferocity in the friendly woman's tone. "There are a few less than there were before. Um, if you don't mind my asking, it sounds like you have personal experience with them, but I thought the Fallen last got into the City at the Battle of Twilight Gap?"
Amanda was quiet for a while, staring down at her clasped hands on her worktable. "You're knew – you don't know what it was like. For a long time, the City was a legend, an impossible dream. It was the only spark of hope that somewhere, there was a refuge beneath the Traveler, a City. Most never even tried to reach it. For some, it didn't take long to find it. For others, the journey took years. And most never made it. My group were some of the last refugees to make it to the City." She looked Whisper in the eye. "Yeah, yeah, I've heard all the jokes. Know what? We did get lost. Many times. It wasn't all that funny at the time. We were hunted by the Fallen every step of the way, and my mama's shotgun, the Chaperone, was the only reason I made it here."
Whisper was stunned. For some reason, she had assumed that the refugees had all arrived long ago. That they were still arriving now… And guardians thought it was funny? How disconnected were guardians from the general population? That was a dangerous rift. Oh, right. Talking. "I'm sorry, Amanda, I didn't know that."
The shipwright looked away, embarrassed. "Sorry, the anger still catches me off-guard sometimes. And I know that you're new – I could hardly expect you to know my history. Just, forget I said anything, alright? Just… don't feel bad for the Fallen. Ever. Now," she continued with forced cheeriness, "let's drop that unpleasantness and get back to the good stuff. Sparrows will mostly take care of themselves with how often they get transmatted by ghosts, but let me know you how they work and what us non-guardians have to do to keep them in top shape. First, if you look here, you can see the…"
…
Once again Whisper sat in her preferred spot at the top of the Tower looking out over the City. She'd done a lot of thinking about what Amanda had said about the Fallen, but now her mind returned to the last mission.
"Blabber, what did you mean by warmind? I almost remembered something when you mentioned it." She could connect to the network and download most of what the guardians knew (other than the Vanguard's locked files), but she preferred to hear it from Blabbermouth when she could. For some reason it was easier not to get overwhelmed with data that way.
Well, the warminds were ancient AI constructs created to protect humanity from threats. Originally there were multiple warminds, but we've recently learned that they were networked and put under the control of one warmind, the warmind, Rasputin.
Once again Whisper felt a ghost of… of something, an emotional twitch, at hearing that name.
When the darkness came, Rasputin had access to all the greatest weapons of the Golden Age and met the darkness in battle. If something that powerful survived… this could be big.
"If it's so strong, why hasn't it reached out to us then?"
The sound of approaching footsteps made her look up. Another exo was approaching, a female pattern one, that gave her a questioning look. Whisper considered her for a moment, not sure what to make of it, then shrugged and nodded at the spot beside her.
The exo sat down next to her and looked out over the City silently for long moments, then finally spoke. "So, you're Whisper-0, the up-and-coming guardian who slew an Archon."
Whisper frowned. "Who are you?"
"Lakshmi-2. Here you are, discovering a whole new world. What do you make of it so far?"
Whisper didn't like this. This Lakshmi knew who she was, knew that she Whisper only recently revived, yet she was asking for information, probing her. But for what? "It's a big place and I'm only just starting to learn about it. Why do you ask?"
Lakshmi-2 kept looking out over the City. "If you haven't seen it yet, you will." She turned to face Whisper directly. "We stand alone, surrounded by enemies. The Fallen infest the earth, and now you have discovered that the Hive infestation of Luna has spread here as well. War is coming—the darkness will return again. All else pales to insignificance against the single question: will we be ready?"
"Where are you going with this?"
"All guardians serve under the Vanguard, but we are free to defend the City in the way we feel is best. You have seen the hive firsthand; you know that the conflict is inevitable. You are not alone in this. Many guardians and others in the City have joined together to prepare for this conflict, strengthening ourselves, our arsenal, and our information in preparation for that day. We are called the Future War Cult."
"Appropriately ominous. So there are doomsday cults even after the apocalypse?" Whisper surprised herself with her reflexive sarcasm. Where had that come from?
Lakshmi didn't appreciate her tone. "Think before you reject my offer. The darkness pursued the Traveler for untold eons. Look above us—does it look like the light won?"
"Well, we're still alive."
"A temporary reprieve, that's what the Traveler won. And we must be ready for the next fight without its assistance."
Whisper didn't like where this line of thinking was going. The easiest way out was to lean on her inexperience like a shield. "Look, maybe at some point I'll consider your Future War Cult, but right now I'm still trying to figure out this whole guardian thing."
Lakshmi gave her a hard look for a long moment, then stood abruptly. "If you reconsider, I've sent you my contact information." And with that she stalked away. A small burst of light in her vision marked a contact update, labeled as Lakshmi-2, and accompanied by an image of the letters FWC in stylized white type, embellished with orange and red.
Whisper had only just started to consider this strange conversation when Blabber buzzed with excitement from an incoming message. Whisper, we have a message from Commander Zavala of the Vanguard! He wants to meet!
Whisper sighed and climbed to her feet. From the sound of it, Blabber was not going to shut up about this until she talked to this Commander. Might as well get it over with.
…
"Whisper, it's good to meet you. I'm Commander Zavala." The giant of a man held out a silver-gauntleted hand and shook hers in a crushing handshake. He watched her steadily with bright teal eyes set into light-blue face marked by a pale while shape of a triangle. He looked like a small mountain in his heavy silver armor set over a thick red ballistic fabric, highlighted by an enormous shoulder pauldron on his left side. "Thank you for coming so quickly. We have a mission we would like you to undertake to follow up on a Dead Orbit strike that seems to have gone wrong."
Whisper followed him as he stepped back towards a large conference table. "Dead Orbit?"
Another faction, like the Future War Cult.
Zavala looked up sharply. "The factions have already approached you?"
Whisper nodded and Zavala frowned. "That's… concerning. Traditionally, the factions do not approach any guardians until they have served for a year, giving them time to… acclimatize. Did you join them?"
"No."
Zavala paused a moment, waiting to see if she would elaborate, then nodded. "The Vanguard do not dictate actions to guardians—we coordinate and make requests. I'm requesting that you not join any faction, at least for a time."
Whisper considered this a moment, confused. "How can the Vanguard be in charge without the ability to command guardians?"
Zavala sat down at the table and gestured to Whisper, who took a seat across from him. "The mission is time-sensitive, but it is important that you understand our organization, so I'll keep it brief. The Vanguard do not command the Tower, we lead it, preferably from the front when we can. It is the respect of our fellow guardians, and an understanding of the threats we face, that make them follow."
"That's… a very weak form of governance," she said, wondering even as she said it where this knowledge was coming from. "If the Vanguard disagrees on something, or even just has a scandal, the whole Tower could be paralyzed."
The Commander nodded approvingly. "I see you grasp the delicacy of our situation, but this structure is not a choice—it is a necessity. The history of guardians is complicated, and in order to secure the support of the people of the City, the guardians, including the Vanguard, do not have any police power, and can never attack a citizen of the city on pain of exile. They police themselves, and it leaves our manpower free for other operations."
"Then who does have police power? Who's in charge?"
"The Consensus, which is made up of one representative from each permitted faction, as well as the members of the Vanguard. The whole Consensus is led by the Speaker."
Whisper sat back in her seat. "Why tell me all this?"
"Because it is important that you understand that without the ability to compel, we sometimes rely on… other means of incentivizing. Glimmer is the official currency of the City, but the most valuable currency is information, and you are already demonstrating a talent for acquiring it. The factions pursue their own agendas based upon the information they possess. We cannot stop them, but we prefer to know what is happening first, so that we are aware of what the factions are doing and can feed information to them in a… judicious way."
This was… well, it was stunning. She'd assumed that the City, having stood for so long, must have a stable form of government, but apparently that wasn't true. No, instead they held together almost solely because of the existential threats that surrounded them. And they were asking for trouble with their faction system—the older, more powerful (and immortal) guardians were quite likely to take over the factions even when they didn't simply become institutions in and of themselves, like the Speaker who was apparently a one-man office. And when the City folks didn't absolutely need the guardians to survive, their under-representation was going to be a major flashpoint.
And how do I know all of this? What was I?
"That's… concerning."
"Indeed." Zavala leaned forward. "The Dead Orbit faction is deeply concerned with re-establishing control beyond earth. One of their most prized secrets are the access codes to the warmind satellite communication network. We've made a deal with Dead Orbit—they provide the access codes and strike team, and we supply the location of the Skywatch, which they are unaware of given their focus away from earth. They've sent the guardians to clear out the Hive, but we have lost contact. We're rallying a follow-up team, but the number of guardians openly willing to be committed by the Vanguard over any other faction is limited, and those we trust fewer still, so it will take time to ready them. That leaves, for the next twenty-four hours, you. You are familiar with the site, you have scouted the location—you have the greatest chance of success. So… someone needs to follow up and make sure those codes don't fall into any other hands. Will you do it?"
Whisper considered for a moment, then nodded. With one conversation with Zavala she had learned more about the world around her than in any other time since she'd woken up. This was where the information was, where the secrets were. "All right, I'll do it."
Blabber did a loop-the-loop which Whisper ignored.
"Good. I'm sending you a secure Vanguard frequency to use to contact me directly. Now get back out there and find those guardians."
…
On the other side of the door leaned another exo slowly flipping a knife in his hand. Zavala probably wouldn't approve of his listening in, but then, since when did he listen to Zavala? Cayde-6 smiled to himself and triggered a radio communication. "Hey, I need to ask a favor. I've got a funny feeling that something might happen shortly, and I want eyes on the ground. Can you keep a watch out on Mars for me?"
