Chapter 14, Information Gathering


Hakke stood expectantly, allowing his companions to fully absorb the nuances of the plan he had just laid out. They were both standing or floating in front of him, respectively. Their reactions were about what the Warlock had been expecting. Callie and he had been together for the entirety of Hakke's life, and as such, she was used to the level of tactical brilliance that he was known to bring to the table. There was a reason his fireteam actively forbade him from being the guy to come up with ideas and plans after all. She merely hovered in a manner that truly conveyed her apathy and disappointment.

"So. What do you guys think?" he asked.

Callie was emotionless. "I don't believe it."

He frowned. "It can't be that bad."

Callie tilted her body. "It's not. It's actually, dare I say it, coherent."

Cerulean looked at the Ghost. "I don't like how that surprises you."

"Neither do I."

"Come on, Callie, I'm capable of putting together a decent idea every now and then." The Warlock defended himself. Of course his Ghost was entirely right on this point. There was a very good reason as to why his fireteam back home outright forbade him from coming up with plans. The last time he was allowed to plan anything had been the strike against the Fallen pirate Viraax, who ironically was a pirate in the most classical sense, operating off an actual boat that sailed the Great Lakes of North America. The plan had been a success too, at least as far as killing Viraax went.

The fact that he had also created a crater almost a quarter kilometer in diameter in doing so was besides the point.

The plan he had put forth was almost linear in how basic it was. First, he would call Junior to see if he would come through, and to judge just how badly the Syndicate wanted them dead. With Callie to screen the call, the odds of their location being traced was almost zero, negating one of Cerulean's biggest concerns in the bud. After that, they would divide the workload amongst themselves based on what each of them was good at. Callie would burrow through the CCTS network for any data that indicated Syndicate activity, and then would dig her way through whatever security they had to gather intel. Cerulean would visit the actual CCTS tower to begin getting in touch with the different contacts that she thought could help them narrow down their search. Apparently, while a Scroll could deal with the vast majority of calls within a given city or Kingdom, it was often easier to go about the sort of searching she needed to do at the tower. It definitely helped that it was located at Beacon Academy, which meant that the security was high enough to make any attempt at killing or kidnapping her basically impossible. Finally, Hakke was to finalize his designs and prepare weaponry for the team.

They were going to need it. He was going to need it. Mainly his City guns. It had been too long since he had shot Midnight Coup.

He looked around the garage for Slick's- now that he thought about it, it was his Scroll. He found the device on the bench that also held the Bolas Gauntlet prototype. He figured he would have the Gauntlet operational with an extra hour or two of work. It wouldn't be pretty, but it would be functional. Which was better.

He grabbed the Scroll and turned to the Ghost and the Detective.

"Alrighty, then. Let's get this party started."

He snapped open his Scroll, before he realized that he had never actually gotten contact information for Junior. He looked to Callie. "Uh."

"Fine. One second." She said with a titter. A quick flash of blue light from her cyclopean eye and his Scroll began to dial. The Warlock mouthed a thanks to his companion, listening to the dial tone ringing. After a moment someone on the other end picked up the call, and a generic, blank silhouette appeared on the semi-translucent screen.

"Who is this?" the gruff voice of Junior snapped over the comms device.

"Junior. It's Hakke. Calling to see if you have anything for me yet."

There was a pause. "Who?"

Well, that was a good start. "Hakke. I was in last night looking for info on a trio of mercs."

"Right. In after hours, paid up front, I remember you. Give me a second, and I'll hand over what I got."

Hakke looked over to Cerulean to get a gauge as to what she was thinking. This sort of interaction was more up her alleyway than it was his. If Junior came up with anything funky or acted suspicious, the trained detective would be able to pick up on it far better than the Guardian.

So far she was unreadable, all her attention concentrated on the Scroll and Junior.

Eventually, Junior returned. "I don't have much, so don't get your hopes up yet. I'm still waiting on a few guys to get back to me. They're a mercenary team for hire made up of Doc, Sage, and Ajax. They go by nicknames, actually everyone in their outfit does. They belong to a loose network of mercenaries, a sort of world wide job board thing; they usually pick up the jobs that Huntsmen either don't want to do or can't."

"The less than legal, then."

"Yeah, those are the ones. Or the ones that need doing in some village in the back end of nowhere. I know a guy in that network, he says they're contracted out right now with one of the bigger organizations here in Vale. If their employers are big enough, then they're most likely handling housing and whatnot for these guys."

"Okay. Anything else?"

"Right now? No. This number a good one to call you at? If it is, I'll give you a ring the moment I find anything else."

"Well that's… definitely information. I'll let you get back to it." Cerulean had become readable again, and even Hakke was picking up some weird vibes from the information broker. He was talking just a bit faster than he remembered.

As if to confirm his suspicions, the man spoke up again. "What's that?" He called out to someone on his end of the line. "Ah. Perfect." He returned to the call proper. "You have good timing, I just got something more concrete for you."

"Oh?" Something was definitely up. "Lay it on me."

"A sighting of these guys, sounds like they may have some accommodations down by the docks. Probably one of the retrofitted piers, some of those are set up for people like them. Better to have mercs taking up space there than a bunch of animals like the Fang. I'll send you the address. We'll be in touch."

And with that, Junior hung up. Hakke waited a moment and closed the Scroll with a nod.

"So you picked up on how that has to be a trap, right?" Cerulean asked.

"I got some weird vibes from him, sure. But a trap? Seems bad for business if he gets clients killed on the regular."

She rolled her eyes. "Once again, you're not a client, you're a nobody in this city. An unknown. Killing you off doesn't matter to people like him. Now I've used him in the past, the info he gave you he wouldn't have wasted your time with normally. Come on, the mercenaries were hired by a big player? Who else would be able to hire mercenaries?"

He thought about it. "If this is a Syndicate trap, then that does tell us quite a bit about how much they want us gone."

"If they're willing to rope an independent broker into it, and willing to jeopardize the connection he brings to the smaller gangs, then they really want us dead. Wonderful."

"Is this a normal level of 'Kill these guys' that the Syndicate usually brings to the table?"

"No. It's not. Hell, they've already broken the Handshake outright with that attack team they had at my apartment building. I'm starting to think that they're up to something big." Silence reigned in the garage, before Cerulean continued with a question. "That artifact that they stole from you, can you describe it?"

He looked to Callie. She tilted in the air, leaving the decision up to him. "Uh, yeah, sure. It's a full stone helmet. We've been calling it the Crown. Covers most of the face besides the eye holes, and has two pronounced fins coming off the sides, they curve down."

"A stone hat?" Cerulean asked incredulously.

"There's a lot more to the thing than meets the eye, even if I'm not sure exactly how. It's-" He paused, searching for the right word. "It's unnatural. Best phrase I've got for it. And there are these runes carved all along its surface."

"Runes?"

"Yeah."

"What kind? Can you describe them?"

"I can do you one better." Hakke rummaged around in a drawer until he found what he was looking for: a small stub of chalk. Then he kneeled down and roughly sketched out a Hive rune that he was fairly certain he had seen on the Crown. Only one at a time, however, he didn't know the full extent of what magics the Hive had imbued their writings with, although he felt that an individual rune wouldn't make things go out of control.

Still, chalk was easier to get rid of with a palm strike than paper.

The rune was all straight lines, symmetrical along the horizontal axis. When he had it etched on the ground he turned to Cerulean.

"Stuff like this. When power is introduced to the Crown, these runes glow green. Don't know how or why, but the thing is an energy hog."

"So it's not actually stone then."

"Maybe? I have no idea. To see if it just has a stone covering I would need to have it and break it." He pointed at the rune. "There a reason you wanted to see this, outside of getting information about the thing I was guarding?"

"Can I see that?" She asked, reaching for the chalk. Once Hakke handed it over, she crouched down and began sketching. Once done, she stepped back. "Is this one of them?"

She had sketched a rough Hive rune on the ground, right next to his. A different rune.

"The hell did you pick that up?"

"Do you know it?"

"That's one of the runes, yes. Where did you see that?"

She fiddled with the chalk stub with one hand. "The case I was working on, right before Ponci sold me out? 34 people went missing in less than 48 hours, all of them from the poor neighborhoods of the city, a mix of faunus and human. All except one: a bioengineer from one of the richer districts. The man was, not well in the head, he had some crackpot theories that got him kicked out of his job at Vale University, all of them about this style of rune."

Oh. That was bad. It may be a mystery to the people of Remnant as to why a bioengineer would be interested in extraterrestrial runic writing, but Hakke knew the sorts of twisted knowledge that could be dragged out from such sources.

"You know what they mean?" She asked.

"Nothing good," he replied. "If this bioengineer didn't match up with the rest of the people who went missing, then how do you know he's involved?"

"Timeline, mostly. He also seemed to believe that there was a conspiracy out to get him, concerns that the police decided weren't founded in reality. And then he and 33 others just vanish into thin air."

"That'll do it." Hakke muttered.

Cerulean got up, putting the chalk on the bench. "I'm going to head out before the airbuses to the CCTS Tower stop for the night. We all apparently have our jobs to do, so let's get down to it. Go ahead and transcribe all of the runes that you can remember down on some paper. Maybe they're a code, or a pattern or something."

"I very much so doubt that."

"Well, worth a shot at least." With that she got into the driver's seat of the van. Hakke walked over to the window, which she rolled down.

"Take this." He said, handing her his Scroll. "I'm going to be stuck here, so it makes more sense for you to have it."

"Besides," Callie said as she swung into view. "I made myself a contact inside the Scroll, so if you need to get in touch, you can."

Hakke hit the button to open the door, and she drove off. He watched the van vanish around a corner before lowering the door once more. He returned to his Gauntlet and took up his tools. It didn't take him long to get engrossed in the work once more. Finally, he pulled open the vice and looked over his handiwork. It was ugly as sin, but it fit on his arm and it wouldn't hit him when he fired it. He checked the bolas cartridges, confirming that they were full on Electricity Dust.

He then retrieved Midnight Coup off of the bench, holstering it in the small of his back. It felt good to have its weight on his person again. Three ammo prototypes. He could test three ammo prototypes on the fly.

"You're planning on going to investigate that dock, aren't you." Callie stated more than asked.

"Oh yeah. So far it's the only real lead we've got to go off of. We can't just not exploit that."

"Cerulean is probably correct in that it is a trap, you realize, right?"

"Yep."

"And?"

He pulled the last strap of his new Gauntlet tight, cinching the device to his left forearm.

"We're going to set it off."


Shorter chapter this week sadly, as it's mainly just setting up the next batch of misfortune and nothing really interesting or noteworthy is happening to anyone else right one to justify a perspective shift. Next chapter will not be this anemic, however. I have plans for the next bit here.

- RangoTango

Response Time once again.

DarkMegatronXX47 - Oh, big time. The things Hakke went through during the course of the Red War are central to the person he is today. I plan to reveal some of the most influential moments of his days back in Sol over the course of the story, and there is a lot to unpack.

The Baz - Warlock themed rebuttal. The first chapter takes place less than a week before Season of the Arrivals ended. So he missed Titan, Mars, Mercury, Io's vanishing, the Traveler healing itself, and everything that comes with Beyond Light/Season of the Hunt. As Hakke bumbles around in a garage on Remnant, the Guardians back in Sol are just beginning to set foot on Europa, and just beginning to learn about the threat of House Salvation, Stasis, and Eramis.

Al the Obsessive - I've been writing stuff for a good number of years, mostly school stuff like the comp courses that college requires you to take, and then fiction stuff for myself/friends. Still, it often feels like smashing your head into a brick wall, even if you have an idea that you know is solid. Hell, I have earlier drafts of this fic that I ended up scrapping in their entirety because they didn't work (the polite way of saying they were garbage). The nice part is eventually you ram your head through said wall. After that, it may not be smooth sailing, but it does get better the more you keep on keeping on.

OGOPmeatb4lls - Truth be told I'm not sure, I think it may be a little of both. There's plenty of mention in lore cards of Guardians eating almost as recreation, like it's something they do for fun and the experience, but then you have examples of the Drifter starving to death over and over. Since it's one of those wacky gray situations where Bungie has only hinted at the answer (unless I missed some lore somewhere), I'm handling it as if Guardians do actually need to sleep, eat, drink, etc but its possible for their Ghost to filter out the negative symptoms of not doing those things, and stave off the serious physical ramifications with Light as a substitute. That and getting killed resets them to a perfectly healthy state. So if they just die frequently enough, they don't need to worry about any of that.