A red light began to blink on the instrument panel. Banner's eye flicked toward it. "Uh oh."
Ferral leaned forward and squinted at the light, which he'd never seen before.
Jump drive failure
"Failure?" Ferral exclaimed. "Jump drives can fail? What in the-" He set Banner in his lap and pulled up the computer's readout. As best as he could tell, the energy bolts from the Hive fighters had ruptured a coolant line. Coolant had slowly drained from the jump drive, which was overheating and about to shut down.
Rather than burn out the engine, he'd have to drop back into real space and try to make repairs in zero G. Sweating, Ferral pulled up the solar system map. They weren't far from Mars. The Vanguard had holdings there. He could land, refuel and repair, and head to Earth from there.
He eased back the throttle on the jump drive. They returned to real space with a jolt that awakened Lethia.
"What's happening?" she said, sitting up and adjusting her harness.
Ferral told her. Lethia listened with a frown. He expected her to criticize him for having such a lousy ship. But all she said was, "Are there Taken on Mars?"
"Cabal, mostly," he replied. "And some Hive."
She nodded and settled back in her seat, gazing at the stars outside the cockpit window. "As long as there's no Taken."
Ferral was more concerned about limping his ship into Martian orbit. The jump drive left the ship with decent inertia, but he had to fire the other engines in short bursts to alter their trajectory, and they were nearly out of fuel.
"Banner, calculate how long I can burn each engine before the fuel is gone."
"I can't," the ghost replied quietly.
Ferral glanced at the robot in his lap. His eye was dim and flickering, but fixed on his Guardian in loyalty. "I haven't the strength anymore."
Ferral slammed a fist on the chair's armrest and bowed his head, teeth clenched to hold back the grief that threatened to choke him.
Lethia held out a hand, summoning her ghost. "Here. Niki can do it."
Ferral nodded, his throat too tight for speech.
Niki ran the calculations in a few seconds, then began trying to heal Banner again. Banner's eye brightened a little and stopped flickering. Niki had again bought him another hour or two.
The engines fired in short bursts, bringing Mars into view: a half-lit red disk against the blackness of space. It grew larger, then slowly dropped away to their left as they veered into a steep orbit.
"Does Mars have atmosphere?" Lethia asked. "There's only one space suit back there."
"It's thin, but breathable," Ferral said. "And cold. But not much worse than the Reef. Mars gets more sunlight."
"Oh yes," Lethia said, wrinkling her nose. "The Traveler terraformed Mars at one time, didn't it?"
"Yes," Ferral said. "A long time ago. But it fell apart when the Darkness arrived. It's gone back to being a desert world."
Lethia shrugged. "What a waste."
Ferral couldn't tell if she meant Mars or the Traveler, and he didn't ask. He stroked Banner and watched his computer repeatedly calculate their approach vector. It kept flashing crash alerts, then canceling them. He couldn't afford a crash. Quite apart from ruining his only ship, Banner probably didn't have the strength to resurrect him.
And a crash would finish Banner off, anyway.
As they dropped lower and lower toward the red planet, Ferral said suddenly, "Lethia, are you a warlock?"
She blinked at him. "I beg your pardon?"
"You're a Guardian," he said. "You draw power from the Traveler, so, what type of power? I'm a hunter, and my power relates to survival and stealth. Titans are armored defenders, and warlocks are about knowledge and magic. Which are you?"
A blank stare was his only response.
Niki flew to her, studied her a moment, then turned to Ferral. "She has warlock inclinations, but she hasn't tapped her power properly yet."
"Thank the Light." Ferral gestured to his dying ghost. "Warlocks can use the Light to heal. Could you do that for Banner? He needs so much more Light than he's getting."
Lethia flushed, her blue skin taking on a purple tint. "I'd rather die than call on the Traveler."
Heat flooded Ferral's body. He was so desperate to save Banner, and hearing this girl spouting Reef prejudice was too much. "My ghost is dying! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
Lethia glanced at her own ghost and shrugged. "You'll be free."
Niki gave her a hurt look.
"Free?" Ferral exploded. "Free to lose all connection to the Light! Free to lose my best friend! Free to go mad and die! A ghost is the other half of a Guardian's soul, understand? Losing Banner will mean losing ... myself."
Lethia listened to his outburst with cold interest. "I didn't think Guardians had souls."
He envisioned hitting her hard enough to send her through the side of the ship and into space. Rather than resorting to violence, he gripped the flight stick hard enough to leave finger marks in the metal frame.
"Calm down," Banner whispered to his mind through their combined Light. "I'm not leaving you just yet."
Niki was saying, "Lethia, of course Guardians have souls. That's the spark that we ghosts bond to."
She gave a shrug and a nasty little laugh. "Well, that's nice. But they're still undead slaves."
"Will you," Ferral said through his teeth, "will you. Just. Shut. Up."
Lethia folded her arms and slouched in her seat, saying nothing else.
Ferral was glad, because his rage was focusing his Light into the beginnings of a grenade in his right hand. If he had to listen to any more Awoken nonsense, he'd kill all of them right there in orbit.
A corner of his mind pointed out that he was being irrational. But fear of losing his ghost and the stress of dealing with his ship had pushed him further than he could handle. And hearing this stupid Reefborn spouting her shallow, ignorant hatred would push him right over the edge.
The ship spiraled around Mars, dropping into the atmosphere and beginning a reentry burn. Ferral clung to the controls as G-force pushed him back in his seat. He kept one hand cupped around Banner, trying to cushion him from the worst of it. He didn't look to see how Lethia was doing. She could suffer, for all he cared.
The crash alert returned to the computer's screen and didn't vanish.
"Ferral," Banner said through their Light link. "We're going in too hot. Martian atmosphere isn't as thick as Earth's."
Ferral's anger turned to a cold, hard rock in his stomach. He glanced at the crash alert, then his altitude reading, then his atmospheric speedometer.
"If we crash, you'll die for certain," he thought to his ghost. "So. We're not going to crash." And he began to drag back on the flight stick.
Maneuvering during reentry was hazardous, because the forces involved could rip the wings right off a ship, or send it into a death spin. Ferral knew this, and handled it gently, working with the ship, guiding it ever so slightly into a shallower dive.
The computer recalculated. The crash alert returned.
Lethia noticed. Her eyes widened as she glanced at the computer, then him, then at the onrushing planet far below. "We're crashing?"
"Nope," Ferral said through his teeth. "Not today."
The reentry burn faded as they descended deeper into the atmosphere. But their speed was still too great. Ferral pulsed the hover jets, working with grim patience as their altitude dropped and dropped. Slowly their speed decreased.
A mountain range rose beneath them like the barren spine of some ancient beast. Ferral guided the ship toward the eastern end, where a Vanguard base was laid out in white, orderly squares.
Just when it seemed they would make it, an alarm sounded. Red lights ignited all over the control panel. The engines had run out of fuel.
Ferral swore in terrified frustration. As the ship nosed downward, he struggled to control it, tried to glide as long as possible. The jagged mountainside rose up beneath the ship, ready to tear the ship and its passengers to pieces.
Ferral picked up Banner, wrapped him in the cloth, and clutched him to his chest as he braced himself for impact.
For a breathless second, the ship fell in silence toward the rocks. Then the ship hit the ground, and the world shattered around them.
As the ship descended, Lethia thought, "Niki, do I have the power to shield us?"
"Titans have shields," Niki said doubtfully. "If you cast a healing rift here in the cockpit, you might be able to build into it. But that's very advanced Light use."
"What's the point of being a Guardian if I can't use Light the way I need to?" Lethia snarled. "How do I use it?"
"Envision what you want to do," Niki replied. "I'll channel the Light into you."
Lethia pictured a golden bubble surrounding her and Ferral, creating an impenetrable barrier between them and the disintegrating ship.
"I can't ... quite do that," Niki said. "But we can do this."
The image in her mind became more of a ring of Light that blazed around them, healing all wounds as soon as they were inflicted.
"That, then," Lethia said, and stamped a foot.
The ship hit the ground just as a healing rift filled the cockpit.
Lethia had the impression that the ship was traveling through a grinder. The entire front panel crushed inward, trapping their legs. The window glass exploded. The walls compressed in upon the passengers. The world spun and wheeled outside, the ship bouncing end over end.
Then the ship was still. Lethia wasn't sure when it all stopped - there was a gap in her awareness. The healing Light was gone, so she must have blacked out. Ferral lay unconscious in the next seat, blood covering the side of his face. The cockpit had shrank inward, the instrument panel now nearly in their laps.
As Lethia fought to free her legs, she noticed the bundle that had contained Ferral's ghost was caught between the broken panel and the floor. She kicked her way free, unbuckled the flight harness, and picked up the bundle.
Banner's core was still inside, but his eye was dark. No Light leaked from beneath the tape anymore.
For a second, Lethia had a vivid memory of holding a dead sparrow as a child, begging her mother to fix it, somehow. The tiny, delicate body had felt so light, the feathers so soft. She had cried for hours, stroking it.
Then she reminded herself that this was only a ghost, just one more spawn of the Traveler. So what if he had a name, and Ferral had been so desperate to save him? Ghosts raised undead warriors.
So she told herself. But she held the lcold taped sphere in both hands for a moment, trying in vain to warm it. Then, with a glance at Ferral's unconscious face, she tucked the core into her shirt pocket.
"Niki?" she said aloud.
"What - what," he replied in her head, sounding dazed. "I think I ... must have come out of phase in the crash." He appeared in a flicker of Light. Half his segments were bent to one side, as if he'd taken a heavy blow. He traced her with a healing beam in a slow, bemused way. Then he did the same to Ferral.
"Banner's dead," Lethia told Niki. Wait, why had she used the ghost's name?
Niki made a mournful moaning sound. "I didn't think he'd survive. Where is he?"
"Lost in the wreck, I think," Lethia lied. She picked up the empty cloth. "I found this."
At that point, Ferral stirred and looked at her. He stared at the cloth for a long moment. Then he drew a huge breath. "Banner!" He struggled and kicked, his legs pinned under the instrument panel. "Where's Banner?"
"This is all I found," Lethia said. She didn't know why she didn't just give him the dead core. Some instinct told her to keep the ghost very close and secret for a while, and she didn't have time to ponder why.
Ferral stopped struggling and lay motionless in his seat, one hand over his face. Lethia heaved at the broken instrument panel and managed to lift it a few inches. He pulled his legs free with a wince.
Niki healed him again and murmured, "I'm so sorry."
Ferral didn't answer. He crawled out of his seat and began searching through the wreckage that covered the floor.
"He may have been thrown out of the ship," Lethia said.
Ferral shot her a savage look. "You don't understand. So don't say anything. All right?"
She looking at the tears gleaming in his eyes and nodded. She'd made herself odious to him and he had no ghost to keep him under control. So she climbed out the nearest broken window.
Seeing the ship from the outside, she was amazed they'd survived. It lay on a rocky hillside. The front section was crushed in on itself like the ship had hit a wall. One wing was missing, while the other was bent at a right angle, pointing into the sky. A trail of debris marked their path. From her position on the mountainside, it looked miles long.
The chilly wind whipped her hair in her face. She squinted across the barren Martian landscape and tried to remember where the Vanguard base lay. The crash had disoriented her, and she wasn't sure.
The slight weight of the ghost in her pocket nagged at her. Why had she kept it? It wasn't hers. Yet the alien energy inside her told her to hold onto it. That was it - she needed more Light.
Without thinking, Lethia called on her Light and dropped a small healing circle on the ground around her feet. The ground shimmered with light, lapping her feet and legs. Again, moving by instinct, she sat down in it. The Light swirled around her, as well as the core in her pocket.
"What are you doing?" Niki said, appearing beside her.
Lethia shrugged. "Shock."
It may have been shock, now that she thought about it. But it may also have been a prompt from elsewhere. She'd always thought she would have been an excellent Techeun, but positions weren't available to the general public. Awoken sensed things, and perhaps becoming a Guardian had amplified that part of her.
She sat in the rift, reactivating it whenever it began to fade. There was no sign of life from Banner, but Lethia didn't stop. It was important to keep the rift going.
After a long time, Ferral crawled out of the wreckage. He climbed the hill a short distance and stood looking at his ruined ship. Then he slowly began picking his way along the trail they had left, still looking for his ghost's core.
"Why don't you tell him you have it?" Niki said.
Lethia shot him a quick look. "How do you know?"
"I saw when you checked it a few minutes ago," Niki said. "It's sweet of you to try to revive Banner, but ... I'm afraid he's returned to Light."
Lethia shrugged. "Let me experiment with Light. I have a feeling."
"You could tell Ferral what you're doing."
"He'd take the core back. And I have to do this right now." Lethia couldn't explain it any more clearly than that.