Chapter 36: Cerberus Vae III pt. 2
Valus Ta'aurc thumped the armrest of his command chair in satisfaction as the guardians fled. The loss of Val Bou'urc, Val Zu'aurc, Val Ma'aurg, and Val Ca'aul was a steep price to pay, but if it would convince the ever-cautious Primus Ta'aun to finally deploy against the human whelps and finish them, it was well worth it.
"You see, Val Ku'uran? These humans may be effective against small numbers, but a concentrated force will push them back. Now they run, like the others before them."
Val Ku'uran nodded but glanced down as his instruments blinked with an incoming message. "Signal from Primus Ta'aun. He is sending two squads of Skyburners to our assistance."
Ta'aurc waived a hand. "Unnecessary. Deploy the Ice Reapers. A single council of Psion Flayers and their escorts should be sufficient to retake the Dust Palace. Vatch and his ilk can prove themselves. And send one of the Skyburner squads with them. We'll retain one here. We can't let the Primus feel his… concern is not appreciated."
"Yes, Valus."
…
"Now what?" demanded Vistrek once they cleared the area.
Alice put a gentle hand on his forearm. "Calmly, Vistrek. We cannot help the City if we are killed."
The titan wrenched his arm away. "We can't help them by running away, either."
Alice held up her gloved hand that was still faintly smoking from disintegrating a Legionary. "We are not giving up. Whisper, do you have any suggestions? Clearly, we cannot simply charge into the Cabal's killing fields."
Whisper stared towards the distant outline of Freehold, thinking hard. "I… may have an idea." She turned to face her fireteam. "Alice is right, we can't just run straight at the Iron Line, not when they are expecting us. The canyon walls prevent overhead bombardment, and the tank's anti-aircraft weapons would destroy any jumpship that tried to make a drop-off… but there may be another way. The tank is big, it doesn't fit beneath the canyon wall's overhang We might be able to pull off a halo jump."
"Whisper, you are not making sense again," pointed out Alice.
"Sorry. A high altitude, low opening parachute jump from the canyon walls down to the tank. Only with the Light, we just… jump."
Vistrek nodded thoughtfully, his frustration vanishing with a course of action in front of him. "I've never jumped that far before, but it should work. We just start gliding as we get close."
Alice agreed. "A little frightening, perhaps, and we would be vulnerable to any Cabal on top of the tank if we slowed too soon, but fundamentally simple."
"Yeah, about that," said Whisper hesitantly. "I don't know how to float like you two. Hunters mostly just sort of jump using the Light as a platform. I'll try to tie it, but you may need to cover for me on the way down."
"We will watch over you," promised Alice. "But Vistrek is correct in that we have very little time. Let us go."
Their sparrows transmatted into reality before them and they set off with Whisper leading the way around to the canyon walls.
…
Vistrek reminded himself of Zavala's guidance: Your Light is what makes you a guardian. Embrace it. Then he took one last breath, nodded to Alice, and took a running leap off the edge of the cliff. He plummeted like a stone, autorifle clenched in both hands as his stomach did a summersault, and profoundly wished he had mastered the Thundercrash technique. This would have been a perfect opportunity. Next time, he promised himself.
He glanced to the side and couldn't help but be impressed by Alice. Where he was rigid, she soared, arms spread and making tiny adjustments to control her descent while her robes flapped furiously at her feet as the air rushed past them both.
…
Whisper waited several seconds before jumping off after the other two. She didn't really have a way to slow her descent, and she didn't want to land by herself. And that was the best-case scenario.
The computer in her head noted her trajectory was beginning to drift. She moved her arms experimentally, noting the change in her descent, and quickly brought herself back on course. Being a machine has one advantage, at least – programmable muscle memory.
Below, Vistrek and Alice slowed, doing whatever it was they did to float on the Flight. Whisper blew past them, still accelerating towards the rapidly approaching land tank.
She reached for the Light, solidifying it between her feet, and pushed off. Her downward momentum disappeared with physics-defying paracausal power, and for a moment she was leaping upwards again, before plummeting once more. Too early!
The tank rushed forward again. Wait for it, wait for it, n—
…
She stood on a balcony with bare feet, feeling the breeze blow through her hair as the Traveler smiled down from above. She grinned and waved at it, wondering what it was up to.
…
Alice swirled in the tricky crosscurrents of wind generated by the canyon walls. Her pulse rifle flared and a Cabal Legionary went down below. Then she winced as Whisper impacted with an incredible thud, smashing through the outer hull.
…
The Light flashed and Whisper found herself lying in a heap of tangled metal. She forced her way upwards with a grunt of effort and rolled out onto the top of the Cabal land tank. Oops.
Vistrek and Alice were there, back to back, picking off the first Cabal emerging from maintenance accessways. The titan's auto rifle cut down a Cabal Centurion and he spared a moment to grin at her. "Nice landing."
She rolled her eyes. "As it happens, I've discovered a convenient hole that leads inside. You want to take the lead?"
"Happily."
The titan leaped into her impact crater, his heavy armor crushing the debris and clearing the path inside. Whisper heard his auto rifle erupt below, and she pulled out her shotgun. She really would have preferred the SMG in such tight quarters, but against Cabal armor she needed the punch.
Alice floated gracefully after the titan, and Whisper jumped in just behind.
…
Ta'aun, Primus of the Skyburners Legion, looked up as his staff huddled around a new report. "Speak," he demanded.
Valus Gho'ourn cleared his throat and stood at attention. "Primus, these 'guardians' are mounting a defense. Small fighter craft no larger than a Harbinger have engaged our outer scouts with makeshift weapons. A few are piloted adequately. Most are useless. Our scouts have approached the guardians' primary fortifications on the planet they refer to as 'Earth.' There is some anti-aircraft weaponry, but it should pose little challenge. The scouts also report interference of some kind from the enormous sphere they call the 'Traveler' hovering over their fortifications." The Cabal hesitated, then fell silent.
Primus Ta'aun glared at the Valus. "You are not some Sand Eater, Valus Gho'ourn. You are an analyst on the general staff. Speak."
"Primus… there are also reports of counterattacks on the surface below. Squads of three guardians each have mounted raids on several locations, including the Dust Palace and the Cerberus Vae III."
"What? Valus Ta'aurc claimed he destroyed six of them when he took the city. Have they returned for more?"
Gho'ourn nodded. "Sand Eater troops located the bodies and confirmed the kills. Yet the Cerberus Vae now reports fighting has reached inside the tank itself."
Ta'aurn turned and looked out the blast proof window of his command ship at the buzz of activity as the fleet prepared to move and thought, while his bond brothers and closest advisors Valus Tlu'urn and Valus Mau'ual joined him in conference. Three of them, alone, against the might of the imperial land tank? Madness! And yet…
He glanced at his two comrades for reassurance. Between the three of them, they were responsible for the death of countless guardians on the Martian battlefields before they had withdrawn centuries ago. And yet, to do it they had always brought overwhelming firepower to bear, sometimes two or three times, before they finally stayed down. He had successfully completed campaigns that had shaken the very stars, but he had never seen anything quite like these guardians before.
Could the guardians we fought been only scouts? Are these their real forces?
He pulled up the scouts' imagery. That fortress could house hundreds of thousands, maybe millions given their small size. They couldn't all have these strange powers, or they would have expanded, retaken more of their cities across the system… unless they had other reasons not to? The Cabal had encountered species of strange beliefs before. Was that what was happening here?
He grunted in frustration. He simply did not know enough about this strange species. "Continue preparing the fleet, but inform me immediately of any reports from the Cerberus Vae III. And get squads of the Skyburners down there to each location. I want reports from our own people on how these guardians have changed."
Valus Gho'ourn saluted. "As you command, Primus."
…
Commander Zavala stood as unmoving as stone in the Vanguard's headquarters, watching the display over the conference table. The last jumpship screen was falling back now. They'd lost four of them, and another half-dozen damaged, in exchange for one Cabal scout ship and two Harvester troop transports.
The scouts were getting through now, one way or the other. He glanced at Cayde-6, who shrugged. "Nothing more from Shiro. They're still coming."
Ikora nodded. "It's up to us, then."
"Perhaps," added Zavala. "The Cabal are deliberate. They are still thinking it through. The fireteams on Mars may yet change their minds. Give them time."
…
The command deck lay just on the other side of a long hallway. Unfortunately, getting there was going to be a problem. Whisper ducked her head back around the corner as a swarm of sizzling fast micro-rockets detonated.
They'd found a new type of Cabal soldier, a colossus towering over its fellows and guarding the entrance to the command deck. Alice's pulse rifle had done little more than tickle the nearly impenetrable armor sturdier than anything she'd seen outside of command staff, and once Alice had gotten its attention it turned to bring to bear a massive heavy slug thrower. Whisper had no idea what mad Cabal had come up with the idea of converting an already deadly slug thrower into a rotary rocket-launching gatling gun, but it was undeniably effective. And the Colossus was big enough to wield the squad support weapon like an ungainly battle rifle.
Alice threw a solar grenade that drove back a Legionary coming up from behind them and looked over her shoulder. "Well?"
"I used all my rockets on the Goliath Tank outside."
"We have to keep moving!" shouted Vistrek over the roar of weapons fire.
"I know," Whisper shouted back. "I'm going to try to get past him."
Vistrek's response was interrupted by an access hatch unlocking and swinging wide for more Cabal troops to pour in. Whisper left them to Alice and Vistrek and turned her attention back to the Colossus.
The Cabal was too heavily armed to outgun, and too well armored to outlast. But he paid for that by being slow. Slow to move, slow to turn, and the fact that it hadn't managed to take any of them out before they scrambled back out of the hallway meant its target acquisition was slow, too.
That meant she could get past it if she was fast enough… in theory. She closed her eyes and visualized it.
Blabber was not enthusiastic. This is such a bad idea.
Here it goes.
She threw herself around the corner, across the hallway to the left side, and raced forward in a dead sprint, mechanical legs pounding the deck. The Colossus started tracking her, sending a swarm of micro-rockets over her right shoulder. Step. Step.
The rockets moved closer as the Colossus adjusted its aim. She leaped up, solidified the Light beneath her feet, and pushed off hard back to the right, flipping over the buzzing rockets as they tracked up and to the left.
Whisper ricocheted off the right wall but landed on her feet. Step. Step.
The rockets tracked down and to the right, boxing her in, no way up or left. Step. Step.
She leaned right as the rockets moved closer, unavoidable, and she dropped to a knee and slid across the deck plating, gaining another meter.
The rockets were so close her sensors were picking up the heat on her face. She yanked on the Light and blinked forward the last few steps, slamming into the Colossus with a flux grenade in her hand, throwing off its aim as Light erupted in its face. The heavy armor held, but the Cabal stumbled, blinded by the eruption.
The end of the hallway was only slightly wider than the hallway, and she threw herself against the wall and her shotgun bucked rapidly, smashing the durable Cabal weapon.
The Colossus roared in rage and hurled the massive gun at her. Trapped in the tight confines, there was nowhere to run as the staggering weight smashed into her, cracking the back of her helmet against the bulkhead then landing on top of her with a shriek of metal, crushing both her legs.
She struggled to move, but one of her arms was pinned against her side. She gave it one more useless jerk then looked up as the Cabal lifted a heavily armored boot to crush her. She ignored the Cabal, ignored the wailing internal alarms from her ruined body, and instead put her still-functioning hand on the heavy slug thrower, searching for the ammunition feed of thousands of micro-rockets, pulling one more time for the Light.
…
Alice stumbled as a bomb exploded. She kept her feet and looked back down the corridor, ears ringing in her helmet.
The corridor was destroyed, black carbon smears coating the walls while bits of burning Cabal armor fluttered through the air. The Light flashed as Blabber emerged, and she tapped Vistrek on the shoulder and gestured. They moved forward, securing what was left of the space.
Whisper's rebuilt boots dropped to the ruined deck as the shattered airlock to the command center of the Imperial Land Tank collapsed in on itself.
An entire maniple of Cabal stood inside, armed to the teeth. And in the center stood an even bigger Colossus wearing the dark green armor of the Dust Giants and sporting an enormous missile pod on each shoulder. The Valus!
"In!" shouted Whisper, and she leaped forward through the airlock and darted to the side. A hurricane of destruction erupted as everyone opened fire at once. Hundreds of micro-rockets erupted, crushing command consoles and blowing in the deck and bulkheads.
Three Light grenades detonated among the Cabal, taking down several of them. Vistrek took two rockets to the chest, stripping his shields as he instinctively threw himself forward into the Cabal's midst.
Alice's heavy grenade launcher hurled destruction amongst the Cabal. In response, the Valus activated his missile pods. Half of them detonated on the low ceiling, increasing the chaos and scorching the pauldrons of his green armor black, but at least six missiles reduced the warlock to a greasy smear.
Two Legionaries charged at Whisper. Her shotgun cut down the first, but the second swung a heavy combat knife. She twisted to the right, raising her left arm instinctively to block, and the heavy blade smashed through her arm completely, shattering the shoulder joint.
She dropped the shotgun from limp fingers of her left hand and with her right grabbed the sidearm and pulled the trigger from the hip, walking her fire up the Cabal's armor. At such closer range, even the lighter bullets managed to penetrate its armor and the Legionary fell, leaking black gel. Whisper dropped with it and hit the deck heavily.
Blabber emerged, taking cover behind the fallen Cabal as he quickly pumped Light into her, repairing her arm while violence echoed as Vistrek's fists of thunder tore into the Cabal.
Whisper popped up, The Devil You Know in her hands, as Vistrek took a Phalanx shield to the face and crumpled. The hand cannon thundered and two more Legionaries dropped before Valus Ta'aurc turned her way and she blinked away to reload behind what had once been a delicate piece of targeting equipment, while out of the corner of her eye she spotted another flash of Light as Alice revived.
The Valus had rearmed with another flight of missiles, but instead of firing them at the guardians, he turned and launched them at the heavily reinforced windows which erupted in a shower of glass across the room. And with a roar of rocket packs, an entire squad of Cabal in the light blue armor of the Skyburners Legion soared in.
…
Aunor Mahal strode through the City quickly, but not hurriedly. Beneath her calm exterior her thoughts churned worriedly. The Dead Orbit hangars had been bustling with activity, and not all of it was makeshift fighter craft. Deeper in their primary hangar, just visible, there was frantic work on what could only be described as a bulk carrier. She didn't know exactly where they intended to go, but it spelled trouble. Could they finally be making their long-anticipated departure from the solar system?
And that wasn't the only concern. There were remarkably few members of the Future War Cult on the streets, either. The Hidden knew about some of the bunkers and hideaways they had secreted throughout the City, but not enough to house all the missing faction members. Clearly there were of them more than anyone, with the possible exception of Ikora, had ever suspected.
She approached a normally busy streetcorner, but the cobblestone streets were bare aside from a small crowd of alarmed civilians surrounding an Awoken woman in the uniform of New Monarchy. She spoke confidently, voice projecting across the open space.
"Look around you! The guardians scramble, facing a threat to the City they haven't even bothered to tell us about! The time has come to pick a side!" She pointed in the direction Aunor had just come from towards the private hangars. "Dead Orbit scurry to their ships to flee and leave you behind. The Future War Cult hides in their lairs, abandoning you to your fate. It is only we, the New Monarchy, who remain here to stand with you, people of the City! Join us and defend our homes. Then join us as we push out the alien invaders and reclaim our system!"
Aunor pressed on, ignoring the eyes of the speculative and desperate as she made her way resolutely back to her small office.
That is going to be a problem. She smiled grimly. Assuming we survive, of course.
…
The command center of the Cerberus Vae III was a gaping ruin. Cabal lay strewn across the deck, oozing black pressure gel, while slug throwers, grenades, and combat knives were scattered about them. Bulkheads were gashed by craters that still trailed smoke, twisting in the light wind from the blown-out viewports.
Vistrek gasped heavily on one knee as he looked at the body of Valus Ta'aurc to make sure he was really dead. Light flashed as both Whisper and Alice rezzed around him and he nodded in weary satisfaction. The fighting had been vicious, and he'd lost track of the number of times he'd been cut down, but they'd done it. The Valus was dead.
He took one more breath and forced himself back to his feet, and grunted as half of his shoulder pauldron snapped and crunched to the deck. He shrugged his shoulder free of the broken remains and turned to the others.
"Guldor is picking up hundreds of Cabal coming from every direction. But our mission is accomplished. The Valus is dead."
Whisper stepped closer, confirming the kill, while Alice gazed over the devastation with distaste. "Good," said the Hunter, "but I'm not ready to give up yet. Come on."
She shoved a Skyburner Centurion draped halfway out the viewports clear, sending it tumbling down to the tank's treads far below, and leaned out the window to look up. "Come on, this way." And she started climbing.
…
Alice and Vistrek leaned over the top of the Land Tank and picked off Cabal soldiers as they tried to climb up after the guardians. Whisper clicked the comms and they braced as explosions rumbled, sending debris in every direction and shaking the tank hard enough to send three separate Cabal tumbling to the depths below.
"Thase are the anti-aircraft weapons. Eyes up, everyone."
Three Jumpships soared through the canyon to hover over the Imperial Land Tank just long enough to transmat the guardians up before roaring off to safety.
A/N: Thanks again to my awesome Beta Reviewer for keeping me going with this story. Really appreciate it.
Lore Referenced:
Grimoire:
Valus Tlu'urn
Primus Ta'aun
Colossus
Heavy Slug Thrower
The Psion Flayers
Bounties:
Arsenal of Light
