Chapter 29: The Exclusion Zone
"Life waits inside this world's bones. Your voice flows across the red rock and through the dead valleys, speaking in code and goads. Ancient volcanoes swell, exploding at their peaks and splitting wide along their shoulders. Ash clouds blacken the starved air. A fossil ocean of ice softens and collapses. Geysers erupt, tall as mountains, throwing up steam and clouds. Every moment matters. From a great distance, in the middle of a thousand careful disasters, you watch the transformation with your own eyes. The rose has blossomed." – Dreams of Alpha Lupi
The Regulus Class-99 long-range reconnaissance jumpship snapped back into real space high above Mars. Whisper gazed down at the dusty red planet with a mix of anxiousness and relief that the long flight was finally at an end. Sensor data pinged into the ship's systems and she pulled it up.
Mars was a mess.
It had been terraformed once, that much was clear. Vestiges of greenery were still hanging on in more sheltered areas, and the air was still breathable to humans, if only just. But it had obviously taken a major blow and much of it returned to the desolation that came before the Traveler. What had once been an ocean was frozen into a sea of ice, and she was getting traces of half-buried mega-cities being slowly swallowed by the dunes and darkness that covered most of the planet now.
And they weren't alone. Vex signals blinked across the digital landscapes, along with encrypted signals of an entirely different format, bouncing between massive, hulking warships that swooped down across the planet. One area in particular seemed to have a huge amount of activity.
That must be the Exclusion Zone the Vanguard mentioned. Look at the size of it. There must be hundreds of thousands of Cabal down there fighting Traveler knows how many Vex.
Orbit wasn't much better. Phobos orbited nearby, buzzing with Cabal warships. No time to hang around.
Whisper guided the ship down as stealthily as she could, but the Cabal warships were single-minded in their task and paid a single, one-woman ship no mind. With heavily entrenched infantry positions bristling with anti-aircraft weapons and ready to call in air support, they couldn't afford to land anywhere near the Exclusion Zone itself, and Blabber helped her pick a spot a hundred miles or so outside the zone itself in Meridian Bay at a spot promisingly called The Barrens. They couldn't risk the ship if they ever wanted to get back again.
The Regulus swooped in low and transmatted her down to the ground before quickly zooming off to the safety of orbit once more.
Whisper landed in a cloud of red dust. After confirming the area was clear, she immediately went to take cover, scrambling up the shifting sand of a dune to take a look around and get her bearings. It was quite the sight.
Beyond the immediate barren lands and through the sharp glare of the sun was what remained of the City of Freehold. It had been a magnificent city once, even now a fading testament to the glory of the Golden Age. She could clearly see the tops of buildings and a few crumbling towers still reaching for the sky, like a woman drowning in quicksand reaching for help.
The temperature was a surprise, too. Hotter than she would expect in the sun, colder in the shade, meant a weak atmosphere. Low oxygen count, too. Breathable still, but getting uncomfortable for those who still had to do that sort of thing. Was the terraforming reversing?
After just a few seconds in the high winds whipping back and forth unpredictably, the fine powder of Martian sand was causing issues for sensor systems on her helmet. They needed to find cover.
The coordinates Uldren Sov gave us put the gate to the Black Garden near the lost city of Freehold. It's been buried in the sands since the Collapse. Now the Cabal occupy the area, along with most of Mars. No one gets through their Exclusion Zone.
"I can see that," Whisper said sarcastically, pointing as a flight of Cabal gunships flew over the ancient city. "If the Cabal have been in an active war for centuries, then their automated defense systems enforcing the Exclusion Zone are probably in hair trigger mode. We'll need some sort of access key or Identify Friend/Foe signal to fly any closer, and I'm not excited about even using a Sparrow until then. Can you point us towards one of the Cabal's bunkers? Preferably and old, out-of-use one?"
Done. Sending to your HUD now.
Whisper set off, boots slipping in the sand and occasionally wiping at her visor. Fortunately, after just a few minutes they found an old road of sorts, left by the treads of Cabal tanks, that made the going a little easier. With how washed out the tracks were, the Cabal obviously hadn't used the road in some time. The road wound through rocky outcrops and the petrified husks of tree trunks spaced between sand dunes.
"Not too far now. Let's go over what we know about the Cabal again."
Here's what I have on the Cabal. Eight hundred pounds and highly militarized. They blow up planets and moons just for getting in their way. Just so you know what we're dealing with.
"Ground troops?"
All of it again? If you insist. The backbone of their ground forces are Legionaries. They have jump packs, heavy armor, and slug rifles. Their only tactic seems to be "slow advance." The problem is, they're really good at it, using their jump packs to bound forward with the help of Phalanxes, which are Legionaries with heavy metal shields. Legionaries are led by Centurions that are tactically intelligent, skilled field commanders that use combat electronics and deploy munitions. And before you ask again, their troops deploy using Harvester troop transports, armed with a solar cannon on the front. And that's it.
"And I still say that's shockingly little information for a potentially existential threat that's been right next door for centuries."
Well, we're here. I still think we should avoid them until we know more.
"And there, we agree. Here we go."
Whisper traded out her sniper rifle for the Scattercast shotgun and patted the Devil You Know at her side, and the Chilonis-A sidearm at the small of her back, to make sure they were where they were supposed to be, then cautiously approached the half-buried entrance to a heavily armored bunker. The bunker itself was already built into the hillside, a small tunnel dropping down a half-dozen feet to an extremely heavy, reinforced airlock door. Blabber emerged and went to work on the lock while Whisper kept watch.
Hm, easier than I thought. Scanning for something linking to their networks… yes, there's something inside.
The door hissed open with a puff of stale air. Whisper moved in carefully, shotgun ready. The bunker was a mess, with scattered equipment and exposed tubing splayed out haphazardly on the floor. They must have moved out in a hurry, or else they were just sloppy, which didn't seem likely for a heavily militarized society. The bunker itself was quite extensive, sloping down, then back up towards an alternate exit. The useful equipment was long gone, but near the far entrance was a computer console. Blabber emerged and got to work on the computers, pushing power into their dormant systems.
Whisper took the opportunity to look around and try to get a feel for these Cabal. They were… strange. Spartan, yes, but it was more than that. The benches at their eating areas, empty weapons racks, they were all just… solid. Heavy, thick, deliberate. Even the smallest thing was built to last for centuries so it would never need to be replaced, twice as thick as it needed to be, and three times as heavy. Did they not get resupplied? Just how far from home were the Cabal?
Access key? I don't need an access key. DOS is more complicated.
A light on the console began blinking red and a siren wailed. Oh… I think I may have initiated a failsafe.
"You don't say." The airlock door ground open, revealing a squarish VTOL Harvester troop transport. An even dozen enormous piles of armor leaped clear and marched forward. They were led by Phalanxes, their enormous, green-painted metal shields blocking the view, while Legionaries hit their jump packs and bounded forwards on a trail of flames to spread out.
The Harvester swooped away with surprising grace and power for something so blocky and ungainly-looking, and Whisper fell back to the corner, taking cover behind a bench that might as well be a military barricade, and let the Cabal come to her. She didn't want to charge forward down a narrow corridor into a wide arc of fire if she could avoid it.
The Cabal moved in, shouting to each other in a strange, gruff series of grunts. They advanced relentlessly, making up for aim with sheer quantity of fire.
She pulled the trigger, sending buckshot slamming into a Phalanx. Metal screeched, but the big Cabal hardly even slowed. Not going to work. The Phalanxes approached the entryway and started blind-firing shotguns around their shields.
Time for something different. She called on the Light, eyes squinting in focus, and pooled arc Light into a Flux Grenade, and hurled it at the Cabal. The Light clung to the armor of the tight-packed Cabal and detonated in a brilliant explosion. She followed right on its heels, shotgun thumping rapidly. The Phalanxes went down, and the Legionaries gave ground. But unlike the Fallen, they didn't break or flee – they hit their jump packs and spread out, gaining a greater arc of fire and getting out of range of her shotgun.
A micro-rocket slammed into Whisper, blowing away her shields and sending her stumbling. More fire poured in, but she turned her stumble into a roll and yanked hard on the Light again, Blinking away and into the face of a surprised Cabal. Her shotgun roared and it went down with a meaty thud, but the magazine was dry. She dropped it, trusting Blabber to safely transmat it away and pulled out the Devil You Know.
The fight devolved into a slugfest, but there weren't enough of them left to overwhelm her, and whenever she got pinned she blinked away to a new position. She wore them down, but they didn't make it easy. Even the hand cannon's heavy rounds struggled to penetrate heavy Cabal armor, and the last one went down still coming towards her in a reckless suicide charge.
As the thunder of fire faded away, Whisper collected herself, cleared the scene, and began taking a closer look at these strange creatures while she reloaded the shotgun.
Despite her eagerness to investigate these Cabal, she paused thoughtfully. As Cayde had warned, the Light felt different in a way that was hard to describe. Like it was more distant, crawling across the enormous space between the Traveler and Mars. It wasn't so much that it took longer to use, as it felt… hesitant, maybe.
"Do you feel… different?"
Blabber hummed. What do you mean?
"Like the Light is distant, or fuzzy."
Hmm. It might feel a little more… dim, maybe.
"Is it just the distance from the Traveler doing that? Is there a maximum operational distance we can travel?"
You always described things in the strangest way. But I don't think so – we didn't feel this way in orbit. It might be something down here that's distorting our connection. Maybe the Black Garden is real after all.
"You didn't think it was?"
The ghost rotated its shell uncomfortably. It's a legend, something far away and distant that happened to other people. I was more focused on finding you than worrying about something the Vanguard would deal with if it ever became a problem.
Whisper shrugged. "Well, we're here now. But speaking of the Vanguard, let's see what we can learn to add to that sad entry in the database."
She looked back down at the enormous beings. Where to even begin? They were huge, to start. Easily twice as tall again as she was, the Cabal were a hulking bipedal species with three stubby fingers and an opposable thumb. They wore incredibly thick and heavy armor that would shrug off lower-caliber weapons, but they also seemed to double as environmental suits, which flowed with a viscous black oily gel of some sort to control temperature and possibly air pressure. Each wore a fully enclosed helmet hooked into a rebreather system.
Whisper cracked off the damaged helmet from one and paused at the alien appearance. The face had wrinkled, leather skin somewhere between tan and grey in color. Two dark, wide-set eyes with slits for pupils were glazed over in death, while its mouth was an inverted V-shape with an upper lip that exposed upper gums and fangs. Clearly carnivorous, given the many sharp, irregular teeth with no equivalent of molars. If there was a difference between males and females, or if they had gender at all, she couldn't tell.
The Legionaries were first up. On closer inspection, their armor was a complete exoskeleton daubed over in green paint, which probably helped deal with their immense weight, complete with medical systems. There, she could spot where a blown-off arm had been sealed off by a pressurized tourniquet to prevent blood loss.
The Legionary bore a big, heavy, two-handed weapon. It didn't look like much more than a heavy tube with an angled magazine, but the apparent simplicity hid the technology behind it. This was no random gun. As she'd learned the hard way, each round was a micro-rocket. She had Blabber pull it apart to get a better look at the thing and found each micro-rocket capable of efficient operation in almost any environmental or gravitational environment. The small warhead on each rocket was charged with a duplex explosive, part armor-piercing penetrator, part flesh-shredding shrapnel bus. This one seemed to be set for low velocity but high impact. Maybe more effective against the Vex? More worrying still, the rockets were compact enough, and the Cabal big enough, that each Legionary could carry thousands of rounds.
That was very bad news. Things got worse when she took a look at the Phalanx. They wore the same heavy armor as the Legionaries, but their shields were even more impressive up close. It was built to the same specifications as heavy starship hull plating, for starters. With a grunt of effort, she hauled it upright to get a look at the backside, and nearly dropped it in surprise. What had seemed like the ultimate in low-tech was anything but – the interior was running an active, integrated sensor system that was linked to a short-range battle network of all things, allowing Cabal troops to share sensor data and coordinate with their commanders far better than she feared.
Why are you so interested in these… things? We can't stay out here forever, you know. Someone is bound to come looking for this patrol.
"I know." Whisper let the shield fall with a thud, kicking up a cloud of red dust. "But you can learn a lot from taking the time to look."
Like what? They're big, and they'll shoot us if we don't shoot them.
"Well," replied Whisper, dusting herself off, "their homeworld has high gravity and is humid, for starters. They're wearing pressure suits to mimic high gravity and are a pumping liquid through their whole exoskeleton to keep them from drying out. But that's not the scary thing – the scary thing is that these guys are intergalactic conquerors."
Blabber buzzed in alarm. Why do you say that?
"Their weapons. They can be configured for any environment, any gravity. On defense, you specialize your equipment to maximize efficiency in the given environment. On the attack, you have to be ready for anything you might find, and have to work with more generally useful, but less efficient, tools. If they are this far out with this much firepower… I have a bad feeling that we could follow a trail of shattered worlds all the way to their home. And they're also not going away any time soon."
Oh, I think I see. If this is a hostile environment for them, and they've been fighting here for such a long time, they must be replenishing their resources.
Whisper nodded. "Exactly. And now I'm starting to wonder about some of those installations we saw from orbit. They obviously like to build into mountains for additional defense, but what if they've set up mining installations, too? They could potentially be here indefinitely, if they can reproduce whatever air they need."
That's not a pleasant thought.
"No, it's not. See how much we've learned from just taking a few minutes to pause and think? Looking at some of the markings on their armor, they may use base 10 metrics, too."
Well, you've certainly learned enough to ruin my day. Cabal around forever?
"We need to move soon. See what you can get out of the Cabal battlenet and we'll be on our way. Did you get the IFF signal?"
Yes, I've got it. You should be able to use a Sparrow now.
"Then let's go." The Sparrow transmatted out in a sparkle of reassembling matter and they shot off into the dunes as another Harvester broke atmosphere with a boom behind them. They wound their way towards Freehold, keeping low and behind cover as much as they could. It didn't take long to start hearing the thunder of artillery up ahead. They slowed to a crawl, then advanced on foot once more, and Whisper poked her head out from halfway up a sand dune to get a feel for the landscape ahead.
For a long moment, she simply stared somewhere between stunned and in awe. They had reached the perimeter of the Exclusion Zone.
The Cabal were heavily entrenched with bunkers dug in deeply into the hillsides laid out in a zig-zag line for heavily overlapping fields of fire. They stretched for as far as she could see and beyond, housing tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Cabal. Threadbare, green banners hung defiantly across many of them, marked with a white insignia that looked like a shield with four wings and what may have been a crown at the top. Across from the bunkers was an open plain where lightning crackled as Vex teleported into this reality. A hobgoblin's line rifle took down a Legionary and Goblins swarmed over a frontline bunker until a furious counterattack reclaimed the smoking strong point.
Vex torch hammers thundered like artillery on the Cabal's positions, while the Cabal's own artillery responded in kind, accompanied by airstrikes. The Vex assault pressed home, and an entire flight of Harvesters raced down from orbit, wreathed in flame from reentry, to deploy flanking ground troops on the cratered ground. One of the Harvesters took a direct hit from a torch hammer and flipped over, crashing into the ground in a thunderous explosion that took out half the troops. But the remainder moved in anyways, their attack crushing the Vex forces from behind. A quarter of the Cabal troops, at best, made it back to their lines.
And then the next wave of Vex crackled in.
Whisper pulled back, putting more dirt between her and the fighting. It was so crushingly loud that even her electronic sensors were struggling to weed through the chaos.
And the Cabal and Vex had been at this for centuries? We have to keep them fighting. If they ever stopped, ever turned this much firepower on the City… The consequences hardly bore contemplating.
Blabber, too, seemed taken aback. There is too much for me to process, but some of what I pulled out of the Cabal battlenet is starting to make sense.
"How so?" she asked, eager for something to make sense.
These Cabal are organized into different… units, I guess, in their communications. Here's one I picked up: "Sand Eater II Cohort/Century 1/Maniple 8" then referencing a 2 Squad. We knew they were organized into different legions because of their colors, but I can't find anything in the Tower's archives about lower-level organizations from the names.
"Like the Romans?"
Who were the Romans?
"I… don't remember" Whisper shrugged helplessly. "There are just some bits of information floating around that I have, but I don't know where they came from. But this naming scheme came from an ancient human organization. Independent Legions divided into ten or so cohorts, which each had six centuries, divided into smaller units. Someone in the Tower must be feeling clever to name them that."
Well, wandering around to blindly follow coordinates from Prince Uldren Sov does not seem like a very good idea if we could run into something like those fortifications.
"Agreed. We need to learn more about the Gate and what is nearby, and I think we'll have better luck with Cabal encryption than anything from the Vex... assuming DOS doesn't get the better of you again."
Hey, that was just an unlucky break!
"Whatever you say, Blabber. Let's find another outpost, one with an active link to the Cabal network, and see what we can find."
They fell back further until they could call out Nomad to zoom away from the core Exclusion Zone and find a less well-defended outpost. It didn't take long to reach what her maps called Giant's Pass, but yet again the sand was disrupting her helmet's sensor systems. They needed to get back into cover so she could clean them out again.
An outpost should be up ahead. I can dig into their systems and see what I can find about the Gate.
Moments later the outpost came into view. It was an outdoor position where the Cabal had dragged heavy barricades into place. Cabal marched about menacingly, but they didn't have any heavy weapon emplacements or vehicle support. The good news was that this was definitely an active outpost that should have battlenet access… the bad news was that she had to go through a few squads of Cabal to get to it.
After a moment's consideration, she decided on an approach and climbed up a sand dune to take position flat in the dust, legs spread for stability with Calcutta-LR2 in her hands.
The Cabal were big and imposing up close, but from a distance that just made them easier targets. She set her sights on the biggest one, sporting orange paint in addition to the green of the rest of the troops, a bigger helmet, and stylized small wings on his back. They didn't seem big enough to stabilize flight while jumping, but they did give him a different profile, easily distinguished from his fellows. An officer, likely. And he held a different weapon, bigger and bulkier.
Definitely him first.
Her first shot slammed into his head, but a shield system slowed it enough to knock him two steps backwards instead of killing him. He roared a command and the Cabal instantly dove into firing positions. He managed to hit the trigger before her second round killed him, but the grenade launcher's rounds fell short, detonating halfway up the hillside in a wide, disorienting detonation of chaff and high explosives.
She rained down fire on them, cutting through more of them with ease. It didn't take long for the remainder to get down behind cover after the figured out their micro-rockets didn't have the range to reach her.
We've got company!
A Harvester roared over the dunes and hit the VTOL's hard, sending up a huge cloud of dust as troops jumped clear of the racks. Unfortunately for them, they landed in the clearing, and her eyes could see in thermal.
The Baron RS/1 Rocket Launcher thundered and its warhead detonated right in the center of the landing troops. Most were killed immediately, their remains hurled outwards. Some survived, including hulking cabal that wore an even more ornate version of the armor the officer had worn. And given what he'd just survived, it was tougher, too.
She took aim again, but he hit his jump jets just as she fired and her shot went wide. He pointed furiously as she lined up her next shot, and just before she fired she felt something strange. She turned to see a small Cabal, smaller even than she, staring straight at her. Suddenly she was in the air, tumbling wildly. She clutched at the Light and blinked away, looking up just as the enormous Cabal slammed down from the sky directly on top of her.
…
Weapons thundered nearby, roaring in defiance at the inevitable. She moved quickly, focused on the task at hand. Leaping over vehicles, heedless of the terrified civilians, moving relentlessly towards—
She jerked to a stop mid-stride, crashing headlong to the pavement. Gone. Gone, gone, gone. The Tyrant was gone!
…
She landed on her feet again in a flash of Light, just in time to blink away from a salvo of grenades from the Cabal. He's fought guardians before! The thought flashed through her head, but there was no time to process it.
Whisper ran, diving behind a barricade and blasting a Cabal Legionary from two steps away with the last round from her sniper rifle. She traded it quickly for the shotgun as she felt the heat of jumpjets on her back. The Light flashed and she blinked away again behind another barricade and ricocheted off another Legionary. She hit the ground hard and rolled immediately as a Phalanx slammed its shield where her chest had been.
The shotgun was lost but she came up to a knee and drew the hand cannon from her hip firing two, three, four times. Two Cabal went down, then her sensors glitched for a moment with the sand and the leader was there, pile driving her to the ground.
She struggled against his incredible weight, then felt herself hurled upright and into the air. She dangled there, her neck clamped in the grip of the massive warrior. Her legs swung, trying to get purchase, but his arm was fully extended, effortlessly supporting her while calling out in his grunting language. She pulled on the Light to form a grenade. Even if it killed her, she'd be out of his grasp and—
The thought cut off as it dawned on her that the Cabal was telling his companions to wait for Blabber to appear. She let the Light fade from her fingers and the commander laughed. She let her arms fall to her side… and snatched the sidearm from the small of her back and fired it straight into the Cabal's face. The light rounds sprang off the heavy armor, but half a magazine impacting less than an inch from the Cabal's face was enough to startle him into losing his grip.
The moment she was free her combat knife was in her hand and she drove it deep into the gap between the Cabal's thigh and side, black oil bubbling out as the Cabal roared in pain, then blinked away. The chase was back on.
Behind cover, Whisper took stock. Her sniper rifle, shotgun, and hand cannon were lost in the dust. She still had her sidearm, but she needed something that could beat that heavy armor. Well, there was one weapon she had that should work. She blinked out of cover again, hurled a void grenade at the remaining Legionaries, and hit the trigger on the fusion rifle.
The Cabal's shield imploded and he hit his jumpjets, but his wounded leg buckled on landing and Whisper was on him, unleashing caged lightning into his armor just as Shiro had taught her, frying environmental and weapon systems alike.
The mighty Cabal made one final lunge for her, then collapsed face-first, blood and oil dripping into the sand.
No more enemies, but that wouldn't last long. "Blabber, get what you can from him while I find my weapons, then we're out of here." Five minutes later, they were racing away on the Nomad as five more Harvesters roared in.
…
Can we not do that again?
Safely back out in the desert, Whisper nodded, still shaken from her most recent brush with death. "I have to agree. That was… unpleasant. I hope we got something good from it?" She sat on the back side of a dune cleaning out the sensor systems in her helmet from the buildup of fine sand and dust, trying to refocus.
Yes. That Cabal had an active connection to the Cabal Battlenet. We couldn't access the network, not after you fried it, but we did get his access key and some of his personal information. Most of it is commendations and medals, but we got his name—Bracus Tho'ourg. He fought against some of the first guardians. Just how long do Cabal live?
"You've been around since the Collapse, right? When the Traveler made all the ghosts? You tell me. Just how long has it been since the Collapse?
Blabber hummed softly. I did not keep track. There were more important things to do.
"Can you give me a guess?"
A thousand years?
Whisper stared at the unassuming little ball of Light and metal that had been around for a millennium. "You were looking for me for a thousand years!?"
Well, you weren't that easy to find. That wasn't my first time searching through the Cosmodrome, you know.
Whisper set her helmet down and tried to wrap her mind around the scope of time Blabber had been around, and wondering why he would ever defer to her of all people, who had the life experience of just a few weeks.
Her thoughts were interrupted as another flight of Harvesters appeared on her sensors. "We need to go. Is there another Cabal outpost closer to the Gate? With an access key, we can hopefully find out everything the Cabal know about it."
Blabber sighed. Marking on your HUD. Let's hope this key works.
They set off cruising through the dunes that were increasingly rocky as they neared a mountain and what her maps called the Valley of the Kings at the mountain's feet. By the time they neared the outpost, wedged between two large outcrops of rocks they had largely left the sand behind.
The outpost was even more fortified than the last, with blackened metal ramparts screening a large entrance to the bunker burrowed straight into the rock, with smaller secondary entrances sealed by heavy airlocks. Green banners hung proudly, but the white, crown-like insignia from the previous Cabal had been changed to gold. Now that she thought about it, it looked kind of like a Bracus with the wing stabilizers and the tall helmet.
The Cabal patrolling it wore darker green armor with more gold decorations. A veteran unit? Either way, she was in no hurry to tangle with the Cabal again so soon. Instead, she went the long way around on foot and climbed up on the rocky hillside overlooking the tallest observation point. She would be somewhat exposed from above, but she wedged herself in a cleft in the rock, blending in the with the shadows while reserving a fairly clear line of egress. And then she waited and watched.
After several hours night was beginning to fall, and she had a better feel for the outpost. "There," she whispered, "in the observation post just below us, there is an active battlenet link so they can upload threats. They only man it when Harvesters are coming in, and one just left. Time to make our move."
If you're sure…
Whisper moved deliberately, not rushing, but keeping it smooth as she worked her way down to the observation post. With barely a clatter she landed inside. Clear. Blabber immediately got to work on the computer systems, eager to leave, while Whisper gazed out. The outpost's location had been picked for defensive reasons, but that didn't detract from the aesthetic. The mountain towered to the right, while to the left a massive metal ring in the bizarre style of the Vex glinted in the last rays of daylight.
Impressive. The Cabal managed to penetrate the Vex cognition mesh. There's… a lot here. I'm not sure they even understand what the gate is. But if we're going to wake the Gate Lord's Eye and get into the Black Garden, it looks like we're going to have to go through the Cabal.
"Good. Get whatever you can on the Cabal, too, and let's get out of here."
A/N: Thanks to DragonGU for continued help as a beta-reader helping catch my many typos.
LORE REFERENCED
D1 Grimoire:
Ghost Fragment: Mars
Mars
Meridian Bay
Legionary
Phalanx
Centurion
Harvester
Ghost Fragment: Rasputin 2
Ghost Fragment: Cabal
Ghost Fragment: Cabal 3
Ghost Fragment: Cabal 4
Slug Rifle
Cabal Shield
The Cabal
Bracus Tho'ourg
Items:
Mangala Skin 1.3.2
Mangala Skin 1.3.3
Legion-Bane
Lore Books:
The Forsaken Prince: On the Hunt
Other:
Heavy Does It (Exotic Quest Step)
