"I am aware that these are troubling times."
Spyglass's voice played over every available screen and communications channel there was, as it often did whenever he had an announcement to make. No longer was he simply the leader of the Remnant Fleet; he essentially held power over the entirety of the frontier, and his declarations were treated as such.
"Let it be known that no problem escapes my knowledge, no matter how large or small. Dealing with each is a process by which efficiency and value must be taken into consideration, and the top of my priorities is eliminating those who would commit treason against peace in the name of freedom."
Gates sighed, not really wanting to listen to yet another propaganda speech, but not having much choice. It's not like anyone could tune the AI out.
"What all who fight fail to understand is that freedom is inherently biased towards violence, towards anarchy. Total peace can only come through total rule, and so long as certain idols continue to live, they will inspire many into rebellion and threaten to destroy what we have constructed."
She paid a bit more attention now. Was he making a move? Some kind of play against them?
"One individual's name has been used as a rallying cry above all others, used a symbol of hope to unite those who oppose us. Their actions in the past have blinded those from seeing the potential for the future, anchored them in a state of reluctance to accept change. As such, I made it my purpose to find them and extinguish the spark that they had unknowingly wrought …"
He took a pause, and she began to worry. Was he talking about-?
"… Now, that objective has been completed."
Her breath caught in her chest, and she dared not move as fear gripped her heart.
"Tobias Four is dead."
No. This couldn't be real. Ice spread through her chest as she felt the full impact of those words crashing into her.
"He was not a savior, but a man. He is not a martyr, but a corpse. He did not lead you, but rather allowed the idea of him to do so instead. Now, you can see that he was not an untouchable force; he bled, just like any other."
"And think on this; if even he failed … what chance do the rest of you have?"
He's alive.
That was the only thought running through Gates head, and potentially the most important one since his death had been announced over two years ago.
Davis saw what she did, and seemed a bit more apprehensive. "I don't know. There's a lot of people on the frontier, a few of them are bound to be missing the same fingers that he was-"
"And how many of them had Pilot training?" she cut him off, nodding her head towards the screen. "And the gear, and any reason to save me?"
He pursed his lips. "Point taken; but for all we know, it could be a trap."
"A trap?" she said skeptically, unafraid to raise her eyebrow and signal quite bluntly what she thought of that.
He became more frustrated. "Come on, Elizabeth! What are the chances that it'd really be him, after all this time? And that he'd appear at the exact moment you needed it most?"
She sighed. "It'd be nothing short of a miracle, a one-in-a-million chance."
Turning, she stared right back at him and grit her teeth. "Fortunately for us, that's something that Four is well known for."
Davis almost looked like he wanted to argue further, but instead he fell silent and resigned himself to whatever orders she was about to issue.
She looked at Gray, her gaze having been darting between the two of them as they argued. "Get Taube on the line, and see if he can dig up anything. The guy knows the smuggling routes for every system around, he had to have had someone watching Thone."
Gray nodded, and focused back on the monitor to connect with Barker. Davis looked at Gates with a questioning look on his face. "Now what?"
She sighed, and walked a few paces over to one of their heavily-worn couches.
"Now, we wait."
…
It didn't take long for Barker to send them back any anomalous departures from atmosphere; as Gates had predicted, he and his forces had the less-well-known routes fully mapped and under watch. That said, it was still relatively easier to detect something like that nowadays than it had been before, now that inter-system travel was largely regulated and filtered through stations like the one she'd taken to get here.
"Thanks, Taube." Gray cut off her connection with the former leader of the ACES, and walked over to where Gates and Davis waited in the main room.
"He says that there was indeed a ship that left soon after the shuttle departed. Now that the lanes are closed, it'd be impossible to get back to Thone and look for any other clues without using our own ship and giving away our intentions."
Gray smirked. "Fortunately, Luma's lanes rarely ever close due to its popularity. So we can head out and come in, we just can't go to Thone."
Davis threw his hands in the air. "Where are we supposed to go, then?"
She held up a hand to silence him. "I already asked about that. Taube said that the particular route El's savior used was common whenever someone was trying to get to a specific junction between two systems. One way leads to Wyvern, the other leads to Ceto. Wyvern used to be a tropical black-market until the war between IMC and Militia laid waste to a lot of it. Ceto is just islands, water, and bad weather."
Gates pondered their two choices. "Which one is the least populated?"
"Well, Wyvern used to be pretty active until the war. Ceto's never really been inhabited by anyone due to the unideal conditions. Maybe a few curious wanderers here and there, but not much more."
The former 6-4 Captain stood up, and clapped her hands together. "Then that's where we're going; Ceto it is."
Davis grumbled, "This is going to end up being a waste of time-"
She spun around on him, not missing a step. "If you'd like to stay here and say that you passed up the chance to find Tobias Four, be my guest. But I'm going, dammit." She looked over at Gray. "What about you?"
She crossed her arms in a ready-stance. "You're the boss, El. I'm right behind you."
Finally, Davis caved. "Alright, alright. I'm coming."
Gates nodded appreciatively and turned back towards Gray. "Get the ship ready. We've got a trip to make before we meet up with everyone else."
UNKNOWN, CETO, FIVE HOURS LATER
The stormy climate of Ceto wasn't entirely unpleasant, at least not from the viewport of their ship as they flew over the vast ocean that covered the majority of the planet. Sure, she wouldn't want to live here; but even rain and lightning had its own kind of beauty from a certain perspective.
With their smaller and relatively poor-condition dropship, they weren't gonna be able to loiter in the air for long; they'd have to find whatever they were looking for quickly.
"Set the ship's scanners to look for any anomalous energy readings," Gates ordered.
Davis did as she said, but looked confused as he did so. "I hate to tell you, but there's lightning flashes all over this place. There's energy constantly pulsing on the sensors."
She shook her head. "Not the kind of energy we're looking for. All the lightning not this planet won't be even a fraction of what we're after."
He realized what she meant, and quickly increased the threshold until no lightning strike would fall within the criteria. Then he turned to her.
"I've got a match."
Her heart racing, she pointed at the screen he was looking at. "Send that to NAV, and track it down."
Quickly, they veered off from their current course and began to pioneer a new one. She looked over at Gray. "How long until we reach the target?"
"At top speed?" She checked the numbers. "No more than a few minutes."
Gates nodded, and sat back in her seat as they journeyed to wherever they may end up. The rest of the journey was spent agonizing over the immense excitement and anxiety she felt.
What if it wasn't him? What if they arrived, and Davis was right; that this was all for nothing? It'd be devastating, to think that hope had once again lived only for it to die as fast as it had come.
And an even more terrifying thought; what if it was him? How would she react? How would he react to her finding him? He'd been declared dead two years previously, his body supposedly kept by Spyglass to keep him from being given back to his friends for a proper burial.
Why had he stayed away so long, if he really was alive? What had he been doing? Why had Spyglass told the frontier that he was dead?
One of the bigger questions had been what happened to KT; many had wondered if Spyglass had kept her as some sort of sick trophy, or if perhaps she'd been indoctrinated into his ranks. If he was really alive, then she couldn't imagine the Titan being anywhere other than at his side.
She steadied her nerves. In any case, she'd have answers in a few minutes.
"There," came Gray's voice as she pointed to something on a monitor. Gates quickly glanced up at the viewport to witness quite a sight; a small island, rocky and mostly barren. There were patches of grass or something similar, but not much. It was shaped somewhat like a crescent that had been relatively flattened until the curve was just barely noticeable.
In the center of the crescent, near its low point, was a ship. Davis quickly cross checked the model against a database. "Leatherback-class; it's basically a dropship designed around functioning as a shelter … or in this case, a home."
She pointed to the rest of the plateau, flat and free of obstructions. "Put us down."
No more than a minute later, the three of them exited their dropship and approached the Leatherback apprehensively. Rain continued to fall in torrents, pelting them until they were soaked.
Davis glanced at an interface on his wrist. "The source of the signal isn't in there; it's higher up, that way." He pointed towards the north end of the island, climbing higher on one end of the crescent.
Holding a hand for them stay back, Gates began to ascend the terrain alone. If this was somehow a trap, or things didn't pan out, she wanted them down below and safe. Not to mention she was already nervous enough at the possibility of seeing him again, she didn't need two other pairs of eyes to see this reunion.
Her boots slipped on the wet rocks and plant life, but she was undeterred. Opting to climb the rest of the way with all four limbs, she used her hands to keep her steady as she slowly progressed via footholds and outcrops.
Finally, she reached a point where the ground leveled out and became flat again, if even with a little bit of an incline to it. She wiped her hands off on her legs before looking up and freezing upon seeing the single person sitting there, faced away from her.
They wore no helmet, and she could see a mop of dark hair, unkempt and matted down from the rain that poured onto them both. They wore the same jacket that the person in the footage had worn, though their gear was nowhere to be seen.
She stood there on the precipice, both literally and figuratively. She wanted to move, to see who it was, but she couldn't bring herself to due to the petrifying trepidation she felt.
Instead, the individual slowly stood up and turned around of their own accord. Unable to look away, her eyes met his and stayed there. Similarly, he couldn't avert his gaze either. It would appear that he'd been expecting her; that did not mean that he wasn't stunned into silence at seeing her in front of him.
A short beard was there where one had not been before, but his face was unmistakable. She was nearly ready to collapse with both joy and relief.
Though his eyes held the demeanor of a weary man, his features still twisted themselves into a small smile. "I don't really know what to say; I was thinking about it for a while, but I still couldn't come up with-"
He wasn't able to continue as she ran forward and pulled him into a tight embrace, effectively cutting off anything he was about to say. He returned her hug with one of his own, and she was so happy to know that this was real and not just some crazy hallucination she'd drawn up in her desperation. Tears slowly fell from her face, hidden by the unending rain that contrasted quite heavily with her current mood.
Tobias Four was alive.
A/N: Notifications are working again! Took long enough.
- Matteoarts