ACT II: Sword Logic
"Your foray into the Hive fortress marks the beginning of our next battle against an ancient foe. After centuries of silence, they have turned their will against Earth. We must be ready for this war."
— The Speaker
Chapter 9: The Dark Beyond
Whisper spent her time tinkering with the Fallen stealth drive. She'd debated asking for Banshee's help, but with the way he'd reacted to a Fallen arcblade, she'd elected to work on it alone. Besides, it was something of a puzzle she wanted to figure out.
It was such an odd piece of technology. Her initial guess was only partially right. While she was still confident that the stealth drives on their skiffs and ketch didn't run on ether, their handheld versions did… sort of. From what she could tell after hours of fiddling, they were originally run with a different power source altogether, but the Fallen had modified it so that after an initial burst of power from a handheld battery, the field was sustained by a drip feed of ether. She wondered where in their wanderings they'd picked up and modified this technology, the sort of people they'd been.
After some experimentation, she and Blabber determined that Blabber could substitute for the initial charge, but without carrying around an ether tank, they could only keep the field up for a few seconds. And they had to let it cool down after each use, or Blabber's light would burn it out completely. Without knowing how it originally worked, that was the best they could do, but it was still far better than nothing. Once that puzzle was unraveled, however, she started to feel restless again, which inevitably led her back out of the City once again.
Whisper was scaling a mountain peak when she received a request from the Vanguard for another meeting, so once more she transmatted up into the jumpship and made her way to the City, where she checked in the ship and climbed to the Vanguard's headquarters. All three of them were present, which immediately put her on guard.
Zavala looked up from a massive map on the table. "Ah good, you're here. Excellent work at the array and taking down Sepiks Prime. It appears, for the moment, that Rasputin is content not to attack us. That means we can deal with other problems."
Ikora Ray nodded from her position leaning against the wall, arms crossed. "The Array is the key to the Golden Age communications network, but it can only reach part of the system at any given time based on the planet's rotation. To reach the rest, the Array uses a repeater on the moon. My hidden tell me that Dead Orbit are ignoring the dangers Rasputin poses and sent a strike team to reactivate it. Our best guess is that they hope this will extend our reach in the solar system or cause Rasputin to force us off Earth and back into space, where we'll be 'safe,'" she hissed in disgust. "And yet, that's not the worst part. Their strike team lost a member, and the returning guardians haven't reported in with the Vanguard. Dead Orbit is buzzing, but they've locked down communication so tightly even I can't penetrate it. We need to find out what they know, so we're sending you to the moon to recover the lost guardian's ghost."
Cayde looked up from where he slouched in a chair, boots up on the table. "You're not new, are you? I'm just messing with you, you'll be fine."
Whisper glanced across the members of the Vanguard. "Is there a reason you can't just ask them?"
Zavala grimaced. "We could, but with the unusual way they are acting they may say no, which would weaken our position. But if we can learn their secret and then confront them, they will owe us in return for not publishing their insubordination."
"That's… not a good way to run a government."
Cayde laughed. "I told you she was smart Zavala! And she doesn't know the half of it."
Zavala shot him a warning look. "Be that as it may, it is the situation in which we find ourselves. Go to the moon, guardian, and recover any information you can."
Whisper recognized a dismissal for what it was and walked out of the room. Quick footsteps just outside made her turn to see Cayde catching up. "Hey, Whisper! I wanted to translate for you that that was Zavala's way of saying you're doing a great job. I love it when hunters pull something off that Zavala has to acknowledge."
They paused at one of the remarkable vistas overlooking the City. "Cayde, I was thinking—what I'm seeing out there, it doesn't make sense."
"A lot of things don't make sense. Which one's got you in a tizzy?"
"The array I reactivated, it shouldn't exist. It should have been destroyed in the Collapse."
Cayde looked at her quizzically. "And you're complaining?"
"Not only that, but despite being completely intact, it was locked down from inside using human security codes. It's almost like the Darkness, whatever it was, wanted them to see what was happening, and they shut down the array themselves so they could stop seeing."
Cayde, uncharacteristically, was quiet for a long time. At length he spoke softly. "You're smart, kid, I'll give you that. I can see why Zavala wants you on our side. I'll tell you this much—I have a memory, a short one, of the Darkness. When…whatever it was hit me, it scrambled my systems, broke me down, but it left my sensors intact. It let me, wanted me, to watch. But I've never considered that it wanted all of us to see. That's… a worrying thought."
"Do you have any idea why the Darkness would want us to watch? Is the potential drop in morale worth the risk of providing that much technical data on their means of attack?"
Cayde eyed her curiously. "You've got a strange story behind you, I can tell. We'll have to talk more about this, but later. I need to check on a few things, pull on a few loose ends. Head out to the moon and get us leverage on Dead Orbit and we should have a better idea of what we're dealing with there. The big mysteries always pull at us Hunters, but don't get distracted from the threat right in front of you. Oh, and one last thing—go talk to Shiro one more time and get any last advice he has for you about the moon."
…
Shiro responded to her message quickly, eager to get outside the City once more, and they met up in the same copse of trees near the wall, where she explained her assignment and Cayde's advice.
"The moon, huh? Can't say I envy you. That place is a nightmare, and the Hive have burrowed deep."
Whisper couldn't shake a nagging suspicion. "What I don't understand is why they're asking me. Shouldn't they send someone with a little more experience dealing with the Hive? Or some who is better with the light than I am? You would do this mission better than me."
Shiro paused thoughtfully. "They're impressed with you, clearly. But you're wrong if you think there's some objective level of mastery of light, some plateau where you stop learning. And I think the reasons has more to do with your inexperience than you would think. Not many guardians old enough to remember the Battle of Mare Imbrium, or the Great Disaster as it would be called, would be willing to go back, and those that would… let's just say their prior experiences might color their reports. Plus, it's the Vanguard—you can't forget politics. Luna is officially off limits to guardians. If they sent someone well known, questions would be asked. You can still fly under the radar, so to speak."
Thatdidn't exactly fill her with confidence. "So nobody will notice if I go missing on the mission, either. Wonderful. But why did Cayde send me to you?"
The scout held up a hand. "Hold on there. Don't let me give you the impression that any guardian is expendable. Just remember that the only real way to learn how to use your light is by using it, and if we didn't send out inexperienced guardians on dangerous missions, they would never become experienced guardians. You're going to attract a lot less attention than a full-scale invasion, and you should be able to handle whatever small groups you run into, and run from any bigger groups. You can do this. As to why Cayde asked you to see me, well, Cayde and I go back a long way. Even if he somehow hasn't lost a step sitting in the Tower playing nice, he was only ever good with solar light. Now, solar light is strong against single targets, but it's weaker against swarms, which is where arc light shines brightest. That's what I do best. And if there's anything the Hive do, it's swarm."
Whisper crossed her arms. "Fighting a horde of thralls with a knife doesn't seem like the best idea. And I've seen at least some hive with ranged weapons – won't they cut you apart before you can get close?"
"If you don't use your light, maybe." He took a few steps back and drew his wickedly long knife. "Say you've got your gun drawn on me. If I was a lightless, I could run at you, but you would cut me down, right? But if I use the light, and I'm a little bit more subtle than a titan trying to shoulder-check you into next week—" The light shimmered around Shiro for an instant and he was gone. She took a defensive half-step back and he reappeared right in front of her.
"What…how…"
Shiro grinned. "As I said last time, I can't explain how, only show you that it is possible. There are different names for this technique, but I call it Blink, because if you blink, you'll miss it. It can get you in range of snipers, dodge those shrapnel cannons the Fallen are so fond of, or get you out of a mess of thrall."
Whisper nodded, mentally recalibrating to accommodate this new possibility. "And when you've closed the distance? What do you do then?"
"They don't call us Bladedancers for nothing." Arc energy exploded from him, crackling across his metal frame. He somehow maintained the output of light and leapt into motion, flying through the air with lethal grace while his blade carved complex patterns. The impressive display used an incredible amount of light and accordingly didn't last long. As it faded away Shiro took a slow breath and returned to stand next to her once more, winded.
"Some Bladedancers explode the light around them in a real showstopper. Others launch it in a directional wave, or wrap themselves in it and vanish for a few seconds. So yes, we're comfortable in knife fight range, even with the Hive, and this makes us some of the best at fighting against them. That's why Cayde sent you to me. If you're fighting Hive, arc energy is usually the most effective way to deal with them."
"I… see." Whisper was thrown off balance by all of this. She'd assumed the light was, essentially, a form of energy. But raw energy didn't break the laws of physics. The light was more than she'd thought it was.
"Anything else you want to ask?"
Brimming with questions, Whisper asked the first one that popped into her head. "Why do you wear a Fallen cloak?"
Shiro snorted, which is surprising coming from a metal body without a nasal passage. "Sometimes I forget that there isn't someone to explain all of this to new guardians. We just assume everyone will pick up on it eventually. Anyway, a hunter's cloak is one of our most important tools as we spend more time than any other guardian out in the wilds. It keeps the weather off, is a temporary shelter, hull patch, bandage, torniquet, pressure seal, picnic basket, and plenty more. But they're more than that. They're our… calling card, I suppose you would say. A hunter identification, a statement, a description of your accomplishments and history. Taking up the cloak of a fallen hunter is more than just wearing their cloth, it's a promise, a vow."
Whisper blinked. "But they're impractical. They might help with camouflage, but in a fight, they get caught on anything."
"Yes, but they look amazing. And what hunter isn't a little vain?" Shiro winked conspiratorially. "You'll do great up there, kid. And if you ever run into a hunter out there without a ghost in the back end of beyond answering to Lush, you let me know. Ask me about him sometime. Good luck out there."
…
Whisper was both excited and a little nervous as the jumpship broke atmosphere. The view of Earth was breathtaking—or would have been if she'd still needed to breathe. It did put into perspective just how small the City was, housing virtually all the remaining humans after they'd covered the whole planet and beyond, once upon a time. And far above circled the moon.
Blabber looked up at nervously. I used to look up here at night and wonder what the hive were doing, but the only activity I could ever pick up was hazy. Like it was blocked or buried. We gave up the entire moon to keep the Hive away from earth. We hoped that would be enough for them. But from what we discovered in Skywatch… we need to know what's going on up there. Are you ready?
"As ready as I'm going to be."
Then here we go. Blabber engaged the jump drive, and the view outside distorted. On the edge of her senses she felt an indescribable, massive acceleration. Lines of light surrounded them. Even her internal chronometer struggled to figure out precisely how long they held that way, until with a crushing deceleration they were back in normal space and the moon dominated the view. The jumpship hurtled forwards towards what Blabber identified as Mare Imbrium, or the Ocean of Storms. The surface of the moon was cracked and fractured, with ominous green light shining out from beneath the surface.
"Of course, the communication array would be right in the same spot where the Great Disaster happened in the middle of a Hive fortress."
Blabber didn't respond, instead guiding the jumpship down to the surface, skimming over the grey surface, and transmatted her down in the same spot Vanguard sensors had detected the Dead Orbit fireteam's jumpships. She settled into the dust, and took a few exploratory steps. Strangely, gravity was exactly the same as on Earth. Did the Traveler do this? Or the hive? No way to know.
Okay. Here we go.
Blabber updated a white diamond onto her HUD. Last known coordinates for the fireteam up ahead.
They set off up the hill, each footstep giving off a puff of dust. They didn't encounter anyone as they followed a rough trail left by tires from the golden age that led to a large, human-made building. The core section was a warehouse, but on top was a long, thick mechanism that looking something like an extremely oversized railgun.
That must be the accelerator. Supplies ferried up from Earth were launched to outposts across the solar system from here. Hold on, I'm picking something up on Vanguard channels. Looks like Dead Orbit have decided to cooperate with the Vanguard. They're still not saying what they found, but they've shared the missing guardian's last report. They reclaimed this accelerator from an unknown Fallen house.
"They don't want the Vanguard to show them up, huh? Now they get to say they helped. Great." She didn't pick up any movement, so they headed into cover inside. The place was ransacked, with huge cargo containers broken open and their contents scattered and looted. As they approached one of the primary control panels Blabber hummed. Some of this equipment shows recent activity. It must have been the guardian's ghost. Blabber emerged from hiding and began parsing through stored information. Alright, he was looking for the remains of an old colony base. Maybe he's still there.
Whisper froze as she heard a sound. "Movement."
Arc energy. Fallen. We're being hunted.
Blabber vanished and Whisper started to reach for void light, then paused. If she was ever going to learn, it might as well be now – so instead, she reached for arc light. Into the groove, Whisper, into the groove. The first Fallen dreg appeared and she opened fire with her SMG. The impact launched the dreg, hurling him into a bulkhead with a sick crack of bone.
More dregs attacked from every angle, and she returned fire in short bursts. What was that shimmer?
Freezing cold metal pierced her side, followed by an explosion of arc energy. She staggered as the stealth vandal withdrew its arc blade and another stealth vandal brought down its own blade. It tore something deep inside and she lost all feeling in her legs. The arc blades came for her once more.
…
The house was too big and too empty. She felt exposed, vulnerable, and above all, alone. She ran out the doors to the rose garden, determined never to return.
…
Blabber restored her in a flash of light, her eyes narrowed, and she triggered her own stolen stealth drive, disappearing from view. The vandals hesitated, unsure, and her own blade cut one to the heart. See how you like it! The other turned to run, and she pulled on the arc light, leaping into it, and blinked forward, driving her blade into the Fallen's back.
The stealth drive failed, its charge exhausted, and she flickered back into visibility, crackling with arc energy. The dregs cried out in alarm and fear at the display of light that marked a guardian and turned and fled.
Whisper watched them go, then turned to look at the vandals she had killed. They were Fallen, much like any other, but they wore tan, almost grey armor that blended into the background of the moon, with green fringe and cloaks with a house sigil she'd never seen before. It looked like a plant; a long white stem with radiating lines like leaves around the diamond flower. The armor was even more beat up and scavenged than usual. Stranger still, an independent raiding party led by two vandals? Where was their captain? And why did they have so many dregs, but no shanks?
We've got a skiff coming in.
She left her musings for later and headed outside, transmatting her new sparrow into existence. "Time to go. Did you get anything?"
Yes, the colony base the guardian was looking for should be on the other side of the ridge. Follow the accelerator support structures for a few kilometers and there should be some sort of road off to the left.
Whisper nodded and hit the throttle. Despite all the questions swirling around her and her own most recent death, she smiled at the smooth acceleration of the sparrow. She wound her way beneath the support large support columns, weaving between scavenged supply caches and ancient, ruined vehicles.
Of all the places the Fallen could go, why here? Why the moon? There were lots of ruins to loot, but this was also near a Hive fortress on a Hive fortress world. You had to be truly desperate for that… didn't you? Could they be exiles of some sort? After ten minutes they were halfway down the length of the accelerator, and Blabber indicated that they had reached the turn. Whisper followed the ancient tire tracks and rounded a small hill where a round, elevated platform stood, surrounded by smaller depots.
This is where he was headed.
A handful of dregs screeched in alarm at her approach, turning to run away from their idle picking over of the ruins. Whisper frowned at that. Very strange, and very risky. Wandering alone in Hive territory? She felt nervous doing it, and she had the light. These Fallen were desperate and disorganized.
She put away the Sparrow and approached the small command center. The airlock had fallen apart, leaving the whole thing open to vacuum. Still, the lights around the computer console were turned on, so someone had spent some time here searching for data. More tellingly, a sleeping bag had been laid out against one of the walls.
Looks like he set up camp here. Let's see what he left behind. Blabber set to work on the systems while Whisper kept watch out of the doorway. Found his notes. They're all about a place called the 'Temple of Crota.' It's not far from here. Sounds like a death trap. This way.
The ghost updated her HUD icon, and together they ventured out again, heading down into a fractured area. Some incredible force had cracked the moon's surface complete, leaving it in jagged edges stretching up to the night. Blabber hummed nervously. The ground here is hollowed out for miles. Who knows what's happening under your feet.
"You're not helping, Blabber." They didn't run into any more Fallen in this direction - it was just them silently picking their way ever downwards. And then, wedged into the bottom of a crevice, was a structure. Unlike the browns and yellows of the human structures above, this was made of a strange, dark grey substance that looked more like bone than metal. Teal lights glowed from inside the walls lining both sides of an oversized set of double doors that were held closed by thick, black chains marked with strange symbols. They both stared at it silently.
I think we found the temple.
There was no movement or other sign of living things, Hive or otherwise, so they approached cautiously. I'm getting something up ahead. Oh. Guardian down, he added quietly.
Sure enough, at the foot of the doors was the armored form of a guardian, enclosed in a space suit and surrounded by the churned dust of a violent struggle. He had been badly beaten, leaving big dents in the armor and cracking his visor, exposing him to the vacuum that had ultimately killed him. Everything was gone – his weapons, identification, any information. "There's nothing left…"
Blabber emerged, agitated. Not even the light is there. I'm almost afraid to find out what can do that to a guardian. Where is his ghost? He started scanning the area. Whisper, meanwhile, felt like she was being watched, just like that very first day in the Cosmodrome. She turned, and there at the top of the pit stood a stranger, a female exo with a white-painted face. Her body was painted blue with white hashing from her belt over her chest, wrapped in a tattered blue cloak over her left shoulder. Her right arm had a large spike over her elbow, and she held a strange pulse rifle. The exo stranger stared down at her, impassive.
Uh oh.
Whisper turned back to the doorway, where the designs on the chains had started to glow. She glanced back at the exo stranger, but she was gone.
We… may want to move back. Whisper didn't argue, taking several steps away from the door and drawing her SMG while Blabber transmatted himself to safety. The chains on the door glowed white hot and crumbled, falling into a heap. We've woken the Hive!
"Blabber, what did you do!" It wasn't me!
The doors divided into three parts and peeled away to allow a swarm of thrall to storm out with their tortured war cries. Whisper pulled on arc energy and threw it into the doorway, where it crackled with electricity and fried the first dozen thrall. She gunned down the stumbling survivors, but now acolytes were emerging, firing bolts of thrumming void energy from handheld weapons.
Whisper retreated, seeking cover in the shattered terrain as her shield took several hits.
I'm picking up the dying light of a ghost inside the temple!
"Not now Blabber!" Her shield broke and she winced as void energy sizzled against her armor as she jumped over another shattered fissure and slid down the other side, then rolled over to return fire. Something else was coming out of the doors now, something big. She'd just caught sight of one previously, but now she got her first good look at a Hive knight.
It was more than double her size. If the acolytes were overgrown thralls, then a knight was the next step in evolution, with ever larger growths of hardened bone all over its body and framing its three glowing green eyes. It wielded a weapon as long as her sniper rifle, but shaped like an ancient crossbow. The knight let out a battlecry shriek and fired the splinter, which sent out a horizontal line of fiery solar power the burned the dust around her. Whisper cursed and triggered her stealth drive, quickly backing away from her meager cover and dropping the SMG at her feet for her sniper rifle. The armor-piercing bullet bored into the knight's skull, extinguishing the light of its eyes, and it crumbled.
The vibration of the rifle short-circuited the stealth drive, and she was exposed again. Six separate acolytes opened fire, hammering her with energy. The first three were absorbed by her shield, but the next slammed into her head, blinding her left eye, and two more blew large chunks out of her right leg. She fell backwards, floating back to the dust. She'd lost her rifle, but as she scrambled in the dust she found the SMG again, and fired blindly while she dragged herself away.
Her magazine clicked dry and she managed to throw another arc grenade while Blabber hummed. Her eye flicked back to life as the ghost did its work. She reloaded and picked off another two acolytes, but they were hugging cover now. What were they waiting for… oh. The door was opening again, and a new Hive emerged, floating in the air. Not quite as big as the knight, its fetid robe fluttered around the wizard as it cried out in rage, accompanied by another two-dozen thrall. This was definitely an "oh crap" moment. She dropped the SMG and pulled into reality the rocket launcher, leveling it awkwardly from her prone position, and fired into the doorway.
The warhead erupted in an explosion that funneled out of the narrow confines. The wizard burned to a crisp, her screams drowned in the thunder of high explosives, and the thralls disintegrated. The explosion was violent enough that the edges of it caught the last acolytes, burning them to husks.
Blabber emerged once more, scanning her leg worriedly. I can fix this, but it will take a few minutes. It would be faster if I, you know, start from scratch.
Whisper started. "What? What are you saying?"
Exos are complicated! I can repair the damage, but it's faster to start from a clean template, and—
"Blabber, I am not shooting myself! Not now, not ever!" Her mechanical chest heaved with unexpected, burning passion mirroring the internal emotional turbulence. What is this? Where are these feelings coming from? What is going on?
The ghost complied, silently focusing its energies on stitching together the badly mangled leg, adjusting complex electrical signaling systems and rearranging advanced composite materials. Whisper forced herself to ignore her questions and keep her eye on the temple entrance while she reloaded her weapons. Fortunately, the Hive had exhausted their gate guards, at least for the moment, and a few minutes later the last loose panel snapped back into place on her leg. She tested her weight on it.
"Let's get this over with quickly, before more of them show up." Blabber didn't respond, so she pressed forward grimly. The doors opened at her approach to reveal a round entryway leading up to a corridor lit by large, yellow shapes with vaguely disturbing designs carved into them. Two pillars supported the roof, each marked with a symbol in green that looked bizarrely like the Fallen's sigil, only without the stem. Did the Fallen steal their symbol from the Hive? Could they be allied with the Hive somehow? It might be possible for these Fallen wretches, but it seemed unlikely the Hive would accept them. Was it a twisted sense of pride, that the Fallen survived on the Hive fortress world where no one else could?
So many questions. Fortunately, the temple itself was quite small. The corridor ended in a sort of altar, backed by the yellow lights. A round bowl that looked disturbingly like a mouth ringed with teeth held the remains of a ghost trapped in its grasp as an offering. But to whom? Or to what?
The ghost is dead, its light drained away, but I can still read some of its memories. They found some sort of library. They found some information but fled and were chased here, cut off from the rest of the fireteam. They found… the Hive are raising an army here, preparing to invade Earth! We need to stop them!
"One step at a time, Blabber! A handful of Hive nearly took us down—we need to get out of here, get back to the Tower and regroup."
Right. Of course. I'm with you.
Whisper rode the Nomad a ways from the temple before calling in the jumpship, both because she didn't want to risk losing their only way off planet to any defenses hidden around the temple, and to give herself some time to think. And the more she thought, the angrier she got. There were so many questions, and it was about time she started to get answers from the people in the Tower. They had to know more than they were letting on, and she was sick of wandering around in the dark. If they wanted any more help from her, they were going to start talking.
