Chapter 2: Discovery II
"He hey, brother. Been waitin' for your call. Ready to have us a talk?"
The Warlock wasn't surprised. "Where?"
"Ever been to a little place called Wrong End? On Herculina. Dainty little place. All the wrong kind of people."
The Reef? "I'll be there."
Wrong End was a quaint little bar inside a quaint little terraformed habitat on a quaint little asteroid. Most of those inside were blue-skinned Reefborn, but there were a couple of non-locals around. Lightbearers and Dead Orbit scavengers, mostly. There was a Vandal with a faded Wolf cloak in the far corner, glowering at everything. The Warlock kept his hand near his cannon. Just to be safe.
The Drifter saved them a booth, sipping from an archaic wine-bottle and flipping his green coin. Neither said anything until the Warlock was properly seated.
"So, brother, what's the cause of all this bustle?" The Drifter's smile was wide and misleading. The half-sense of danger played havoc with the Warlock's nerves.
"I've come upon a discovery."
"Lemme guess. You talked with the Man?"
The Warlock didn't say anything. He laid his cannon out on the table. It was all the answer either of them needed.
The Drifter's smile grew wider. It was all teeth. "Yeah, thought so. The Man with the Golden Gun. Damn. Thought he'd turn you to ash for certain."
"And why would that be?"
"Oh, don't gimme that. You toe that line and you know it. Maybe he thinks you have a use, or maybe he fears you. Wouldn't know. So all this is because you had a chat with ol' Shin? What'd he tell you?"
"Exodus Prime. He said you've seen it."
The Drifter's grin fell for a split-second. Then he laughed. "Warlocks, right? Everythin' under the sun knows about the strength of Titans, the skill of Hunters, but you folks... you scare me. Pickin' out anything and everything of worth."
"What do you know?"
"Oh, not in me to spoil it. Our Martian friend will dog me to the end of my days. But I'll give you a hint. Cassini."
The Warlock stands up. "The First Fleet."
"That's the one. And hey, if you're planning on vacation, well... pack up smart. And go alone. Last time I went far out, I... better left unsaid. Crews are dangerous. Don't bring no one."
"I understand," the Warlock left a small pile of Glimmer on the table. "Thanks."
"Anytime!" The Drifter cheerfully called after him.
"He gives me the creeps." His Ghost shuddered.
"He's useful." The Warlock keyed in the co-ordinates to the Galliot's nav-com. "Nothing more."
"And when he stops being useful?"
"We cut him out of our lives."
"It's like the old days all over again."
The First Fleet was a colossal cargo ship left derelict in Saturn's rings, another victim of the Collapse. The Hive Dreadnaught, nearly on the opposite side of the Saturn's orbit, is only just twice the size of the Golden Age marvel.
The Warlock directed his Galliot into a landing bay, docked with mechanical claws reaching out to pierce the floor of the open hanger, and ventured out into the dead starship. There was no gravity or breathable air to be found. He pushed himself along with little pushes of Light while his Ghost watched over his suit's oxygen supply.
The First Fleet had already received its own share of scavengers, judging from the entire compartments picked clean. Even the cargo, mined ore from Ixion and a batch of long-dead construction Frames, had been salvaged for everything useful. The Warlock ignored it all. His target was the captain's quarters.
As he studied the bulkhead door, locked shut, the Guardian put his palm against the Frame of the door and called on his Light, leashing it. It was a furious bull, all it wanted was to be let out to expend itself, but he held on tight and loosed only when confident it would obey him. The Chaos Reach burned through the solid plasteel surface, reinforced locks included.
The Warlock pulled himself in and looked around. The room was barebones. Nothing but a bed and a computer terminal. Not even a mummified corpse. The captain must have died with his crew at the helm. The Warlock held out his hand and his Ghost flew forward, hacking away at the terminal with beams of Light. "Give me a minute."
He nodded and looked back the way they had come. Something felt off. He attributed it to the silence. What was that Golden Age quote? "In space, no one can hear you scream," he murmured.
"Thanks for the nightmares," his Ghost quipped. "Nearly finished. Aaaaaand... there. I'm in. And... yeah. It's here. Something about that old ship."
She projected an image against the far plasteel wall, scrolling through different entries of the captain's logs. It stopped as highlighted words appeared before them.
... the Exodus Prime underwent a pilgrimage with some four thousand crew and three million colonists, hailing from the Ishtar Terra, Arcadia quadrangle and North American Empire. Speaking openly here, it was one of our greatest hopes at the time. I remembered the launch as a kid. It is a shame we'll never know if it made it to Kepler-186 or not. At least not until the next Exodus-class vessels reach it. Maybe we'll strike lucky and find out there's a bustling colony there. Or maybe we'll draw the short straw and find out something else cut it off.
Something's bound to be out there, good or bad.
Cpt. Dryden Cor.
The Warlock reread it thrice over, just to be sure he hadn't missed anything. Then he mulled it over. "I was right. Kepler-186f."
"That's far. Like really, really far."
"We can find a way around that."
"Wait, we're actually going?"
"Do we have any choice? We need to see what it's like. It could be a weapon just waiting to be picked up. Or..."
"Or a Hive nest."
"Yes, or that." The Warlock pushed himself out of the room. "We have to prepare for anything."
There were a number of methods of interplanetary travel. The Vex used timegates to go anywhere and anywhen throughout multiple timelines. The Hive ripped apart wounds in the flesh of reality. Both were quite beyond the Warlock. He had traveled through Vex installations and brought down Axis Minds, but he never strayed far from the paths he was certain of. He didn't want to end up like Praedyth. As for the Hive mode of transport, it requires a being saturated in Darkness with immense pull with the Sword Logic. As a being of Light, it was nigh-on impossible, besides being much too dangerous to even consider.
Yet other methods remained. The Fallen and Cabal both arrived in Sol with FTL technology beyond that of Golden Age humanity. Crisscrossing through the stars was something even the Brays fell short of.
The Warlock set a course for Earth. For London. He walked those half melted streets and strode back in time. He had been mere hours old when Devils dropped from the sky. His Ghost had told him to run. Now she stayed silent, hidden away. They used to talk more. Sundance's death had shaken them both to the core. It took everything the Scorn Barons had to make that single Devourer bullet, but what was to say it wouldn't happen again?
A broken Cabal warship laid in a grave of its own making, half-buried in the middle of a crater-riddled street. A few neighbouring buildings had collapsed on top of it.
"We need its warp drive," the Warlock said aloud. "Do we know what that looks like?"
"Not really," the Ghost answered. "But I can pull something from the Battle Network."
The alien frigate, much like the First Fleet, had been picked at by tech-vultures. Said scavengers were still at work, pulling panels and wiring out with shock daggers and blowtorches. A brief display of Arc sent the Dregs scurrying.
"We best hurry." The Warlock watched the retreating forms of the Dusk pirates. "They'll return."
"With friends, yeah, I know." The Ghost started transmatting parts out of the disassembled ship core. "They really messed things up in here."
"Is it problematic?"
"No. Just annoying. Darn ether-guzzlers."
The Dregs did indeed come back with friends. The Warlock drew his cannon and started firing. Three - two Dregs and a Vandal - were cut down in the opening shots. Their leader, a mean-looking Captain with a bear pelt about his shoulders, barked out orders and threats with scarcely a breath in between. The rest pinned down the Guardian with a constant barrage of fire as he retreated into an abandoned café.
"Need help?" His Ghost asked, a small voice within his mind. She transmatted another gun onto his lap. The Warlock hefted the Zen Meteor and peeked out. A Wire Rifle nearly took his head off.
"Show me," the Guardian ordered. His Ghost immediately began highlighting the locations of his opponents on his helmet's HUD. He burst out of cover and took out the snipers first, but a bolt of Arc tore through his energy shield and his leg. The Warlock grunted and shot down the Fallen responsible.
The Dregs, emboldened by his injury, converged on his position. The rifle forgotten, the Warlock's turned to his cannon - and it roared, each bark snuffing a life. By then he had slain a dozen or more, but it only further enticed their yet-living compatriots to press on. Fewer to share the spoils with, he supposed.
One Marauder materialized out of thin air and leapt at the Warlock. He channeled his Light to Blink a few paces away and then emptied the rest of the cannon's chamber into the Fallen's torso. A Dreg grabbed his arm, so he sent a thousand volts into it, vaporizing it into a fine mist.
At last, the Captain was upon him, bellowing madly. It hefted twin blades in each of its four hands, all raised above the Warlock. The Guardian cut the pirate in two with a swift swipe of a Chaos Reach.
Silence fell over the dead street once more, but the Warlock allowed a few more minutes to pass before he let his Ghost heal him.
"They nearly had you," she noted.
The Warlock shrugged. "I'm rusty, I suppose."
"Then get better. We're on our own."
The Galliot was an Awoken design, so he trusted that the Reefborn shipwrights could modify it to his specifications. In the meantime, the Warlock watched as a Vanguard-approved fireteam took down Fikrul for the umpteenth time on a fizzling monitor. The Scorn Archon simply refused to stay dead.
"This must be what our enemies feel," the Warlock mused. "This frustration of dealing with an immortal foe."
"Not all of us are so lucky," Kalli said, from where she sat in the corner of the cavern, sitting a cup of steaming tea.
The Guardian shook his head slightly. "Not before, but now..."
"Now the Guardians flock to our shores, to take up our fight and defend my people. Some do not like it."
"And what of you?"
"It is what my Queen desires."
Ah. That was what it all came down to in the Reef. What Mara Sov wanted. What she planned. He didn't like it, but that wasn't why he came here in the first place. He only wanted to protect. The Awoken of the Reef had weathered a few storms too many and now their cobbled home was falling apart at the seams.
At least Zavala had seen sense at last. It only took the deaths of Cayde and...
The Guardian clenched his hand into a fist. If Kalli noticed, she didn't say a word. They gazed at the screen as the breath finally left the former Wolf Archon. They both knew it wouldn't last.