AN: Well here it is Guardians, chapter 3.
Despite all the many reasons you may be reading this story I think this story, I think this chapter should more or less have something for everyone.
One more thing before you go Guardians. I'd like to clear up some very minor confusion I may have caused in the last chapter. Li's "Nightstalker" emblem doesn't actually mean she uses the Nightstalker sub class. It's actually the symbol of an elite unit of US Army rotary wing aviators and crewman from before the Colapse (also known as today).
Anyway, enough with me. On to the story.
The ride to earth was nearly completely silent.
Derrick sat across from Mark, inspecting his weapon and readying for the coming fight, while Mark simply sat and tried to figure him out.
Clearly he was upset by something other than Mark's lack of experience, no one would get this angry over something so simple, but when he had tried to ask what exactly it was that had upset him he had been blown off and left in the dark once again.
He sighed and walked to the ship's cockpit. This was getting him no where. Maybe Li would be more willing to talk.
He entered the cockpit and found Li seated in the pilot's seat, manipulating the controls while her Ghost monitored other systems.
Miraculously, over all the engine noise generated by the ship, she was still able to hear him enter and spun around to face him.
"Hey Li, can we talk?" He asked simply.
She nodded, her face locked in a small half smile.
"Ghost, take over," she said, disengaging her restraint harness and stepping out of the pilot's chair.
"What's on your mind?" She asked, her Ghost now flying the ship.
Mark but his lip slightly, fearing the question he was about to ask may be a bit touchy.
"Nothing," he said, "Look, I don't know if it's any of my business, but what has Derrick got against me?"
Li quickly shrugged dismissively, casting her eyes towards the ground.
"He just doesn't think you're experienced enough, that's all."
Mark could tell she wasn't giving him the whole truth. Despite the slight smile she kept on her face, he could still notice the hesitation she had had before responding, a little bit of the same haunted look he had seen in Derrick's eyes showing through in hers.
Mark frowned and sighed. This might be a bit more difficult than he expected.
"Alright, I know I've probably just broke into a unit I had no business entering this quickly, and I'm sorry," he said apologetically, "but I'm with you now and if we're going to be fighting together we might as well understand each other."
His cutting response caught Li off guard. She clearly had expected him to back off, and the glare she shot him reinforced that guess, but he simply leaned against the cockpit's door frame, folding his arms and making it very clear that he was going nowhere.
Li relented, sitting down on a box and leaning against a nearby bulkhead and locking her eyes on his.
"Actually, you didn't break into anything. Guardians always operate in units of three, so we were down one when you joined anyway."
She reached into one of her armor's pockets and pulled out a dog tag like his secured to a metal chain, rubbing her thumb over it pensively.
"We had another Guardian in our fireteam before you. Sweet girl, by the name of Jennifer. She had been with us a long time, until we ran into a group of Hive thrall on the moon unlike anything you've ever seen. there was a hundred of them at least. She chose the wrong time to reload and got swarmed. The damn things tore her to ribbons and killed her Ghost, no chance of a revival."
She paused for a moment, seeming unable to continue.
"Hey, I'm sorry," said Mark apologetically, "you can stop of you want to."
Li shook her head dismissively, although the pain in her eyes didn't leave.
"You asked, you get an answer," she said simply, "anyway, Derrick and her were close. I don't know how close, I stayed out of it, but she died in his arms. I practically had to carry him back to the ship he was so devastated. He didn't speak for two days afterwards, and that was only three weeks ago."
Her breath caught in her throat, but she covered it up, placing the dogtag back in her pocket and resuming control of the ship.
"Anyways, he might be a pain, but go easy on him. He's been through a lot and just doesn't want to see you killed."
Mark hesitated for a moment, and then nodded, Turning to leave but stoping before he could.
"I'm sorry," he said simply, not really sure how to express sympathy to someone who had gone through something like that.
Li smiled and nodded her thanks, although it didn't seem very genuine.
"Appreciate it," she said simply, "now let's get set for a combat drop."
She toggled several controls on the ship's main control panel before releasing the yoke and grabbing her side arm and shotgun, which were stored in a nearby rack, and following him to the rear of the ship.
Derrick was already prepping for a hot drop in the troop bay, his sniper rifle cradled in his arms and a shotgun strapped to his back, standing and staring calmly at the back of the jumpship.
Li and Mark took their places next to him and and readied their weapons in a similar manner.
"Guardians, please be advised, we are approaching the drop zone. Stand by to transmat in 60 seconds," said Li's Ghost over the ship's intercom.
Mark took a deep breath and waited for what seemed like an hour for the tingling feeling of the ship's transmat system kicking in and then the abrupt and solid feeling of his boots on the muddy ground of old Russia's forgotten shores.
He took a second to survey where he was before moving.
He was in the middle of a small canyon with one side open to the ocean. Hulks of rusted boats of all shapes and sizes sat around him, some destroyed almost beyond recognition. An odd building on a hill sat about 2000 yards in front of them, rusted, decayed, and barely standing on its shaky foundation.
A waypoint from his Ghost appeared over the building on his HUD. That was his target.
He dropped low and ran for a nearby rock, taking cover behind it along with Li and Derrick.
A group of nearby Fallen had already spotted them. The sheer number of Fallen in the cosmodrome made that inevitable.
The Fallen were positioned in a nearby boat. The ones on the lower deck ran for cover behind various bits of old metal and machinery while the ones on the top deck began to rain fire down upon them, yelling as loudly as they could and letting out their strange, screeching howls to attract more Fallen to their position.
The Guardians responded swiftly and with force.
Li and Mark laid down suppressing fire while Derrick brought his sniper rifle to bare on the Fallen, snapping off shots quickly and causing a number to retreat as four them fell with ease under his shots.
"Go," he said to Li and Mark, "I'll cover you're advance."
Mark nodded and motioned for Li to move up to a nearby boat, spraying the Fallen wildly with rounds as she advanced.
When she reached her target he dropped and headed for her position while she did the same for him, keeping the Fallen at bay. Derrick followed last, and by time they had all reached the boat the Fallen had either retreated or were out of range.
The three Guardians regrouped and reloaded, taking a moment to pause before readying themselves to sprint to the bunker.
Mark took point with Li and Derrick behind him. Li drew the powerful, solar energy infused revolver that the Hunters referred to as a golden gun, and the three took off, moving from cover to cover quickly.
Li snapped off three quick shots from her golden gun, impacting three groups of fallen and detonating them with the explosive power of a small hand grenade and giving the Guardians enough cover to get out of the open and too the bunker without too much resistance
They reached the building and stacked up on the door, checking their corners as they moved through the decrepit building, descending a staircase into its lower levels.
Luckily, no fallen or hive had taken up residence in the building recently, and they were able to reach the ground floor fairly easily.
What they found down their, however, was in stark contrast to the rest of the building.
A large, hexagonal door that looked as clean as any you find in the last city jutted through one of the walls, a small keypad that sat next to it looking just as out of place as the door.
Derrick and Li covered the staircase as Mark moved to the keypad, setting his ghost on it to see if it could crack the door electronically.
The Ghost fought with the electronics systems for a few minutes before stopping and retreating back.
"Sorry Guardian," it said, "Rasputin's encryption is too difficult to crack, even for me."
Mark nodded and walked up to the keypad, thinking for some reason that maybe he could crack it manually.
He pulled off his helmet, setting it on a nearby table before returning to work on it, but before he could even touch the keypad its screen lit up and a message began to scroll across it.
Facial recognition match. Welcome Staff Sergeant Mark Kelly. Please watch your step as you enter.
And just like that, the seal on the nearby door broke and it slid open, allowing him access.
He motioned for Li and Derrick to follow him in as he advanced carefully through the door.
Once they were through it sealed behind them, much to the chagrin of Derrick.
"You better know what you're doing," he spat, "I don't want to be trapped in here."
Mark nodded, remembering what Li had said, and continued down the hallway.
The bunker was a winding maze of hallways lined with server stacks and displays. Rasputin lit a path along the hallway that the Guardians followed toward wherever he was taking them.
The path ended in a large, open room. Hive corpses lay all around it, heavily decomposed, even more so than usual.
This must have been the sight of the previous Guardian's confrontation with the hive.
Derrick looked none to happy at the sight, but for the most part said nothing as they crossed the room to a raised platform with a bank of computer monitors that displayed various Intel on all of the Darkness's four factions.
As Mark approached one of the screens to interact with it, a voice boomed over the speakers in Russian, causing him to stop dead in his tracks.
"Welcome staff sergeant Kelly," his Ghost translated, "it has been a long time since your last visit. I was beginning to think you weren't coming back."
Mark looked to Li and Derrick for advice on what to do, who stared back at him with just as much confusion.
He had been here before, however, so he was on the right track.
"Rasputin," he said confidently.
If the AI saw nothing wrong with a dead man walking the halls of its bunker, than he should act as though nothing was wrong in turn.
Another response in Russian echoed through the room.
"State your query," translated the ghost."
Mark pulled up the picture of the red headed woman and displayed it on his wrist gauntlet, showing it to a nearby security camera.
"Tell me everything you know about this woman."
There was a long silence, and then the bank of monitors in from of him lit up.
They showed another picture of her, and a description which read, Amanda, [Redacted], Petty Officer Second Class, US Navy, TECHINT specialist for Operation: BROKENHEARTED.
Memories flashed through his head, even at the small new burst of information. Most were blurry and rather nondescript memories of her, nothing like when he had seen that picture, but as he said her name quietly to himself he found it rolled off his tongue quite nicely.
If only her last name was still on file.
He decided to try a couple more queries.
"Rasputin, what was Operation: BROKENHEARTED?"
Another pause, then a burst of Russian.
"Redacted," translated his Ghost.
He cursed quietly.
The name sounded vaguely familiar, but it was probably just an ancient military operation that mattered little now. Whatever its objective had been, it had probably failed.
"What was I doing last time I was here?" He tried.
The pause was much less quick this time.
A video appeared on the console before him showing a group of soldiers of various nationalities standing around a piece of technology that sat where they were currently standing.
The device was made of various sizes rectangles made of an oddly color metal, lights and energy emanating from every side of it.
Li and Derrick looked over his shoulder at the video, examining it.
"That looks like Vex technology," said Li, pointing at the device.
"Vex?" Asked Mark.
"Time traveling robots, not to be fucked with," cut in Derrick.
Mark nodded and continued to watch the video.
It was grainy and had no sound, but he could barely make out himself standing at the head of the group of soldiers, issuing orders to all of them, and behind him was the woman, examining the device with a tablet computer.
He tried to focus the video to get a better view of what she was doing, but it was no use. It was to pixelated to make out anything of importance.
After a moment he yelled something, no doubt words of encouragement, and watched as the soldiers pumped their fists into the air and cheered, filing out of the room with a new found enthusiasm, leaving just he and the woman behind.
He approached her slowly, and for a moment they simply stared at each other, neither saying a word or moving at all, until the woman through her arms around his neck in a tight embrace that he returned, pulling her close to his armored form.
Memories flooded back to him like a broken dam. He remembered that sort of thing being a fairly regular occurrence between the two of them, and it had felt good, like a thousand pound weight being lifted from his chest each time.
They stayed like that for a good long while, before he released her and kissed her deeply, not seeming to care one way or the other if anyone saw them.
That too, triggered a flood of memories, the one of her in the white dress coming to mind immediately, and then fading all too quickly. He fought to hold onto them, but couldn't. For the moment, they were too far gone.
When they broke he retreated back from her slightly. She said something to him, maybe goodbye, before he too said a quick sentence and left.
A moment latter a team of engineers arrived with a forklift to move the device, but the woman didn't move.
She stared at the spot he had once occupied for several minutes before moving to help the engineers.
He wanted to watch her for longer, but the feed abruptly cut to him and the soldiers, now escorting a tank column towards the wall around the cosmodrome.
They were joined by a much larger group of soldiers, and even some armed civilians, that took up positions around the wall to defend the colony ships contained within.
He could see some of them taking off in the distance as the defenders set themselves up at the perimeter.
Mark moved through the wall to its outer gate where lines of angry civilians were still parked in their cars, trying desperately to get in and get onto one of the colony ships while soldiers tried to control the tide of refugees and make way for the defenders.
As the camera panned out Mark quickly realized what they were trying escape. At the other end of the queue of cars was a surge of Fallen, firing indiscriminately into the crowds of people trying to escape.
As the people tried to push forward to escape they shouted angrily at the soldiers, who themselves didn't look to happy to be left behind like they had been, but it wasn't like they could have left anyway.
The ships were already loaded, and even if they weren't there never would have been enough room for all of these people. The though of them being trapped here, however, made him nauseous, even though he knew their had been no way to save them.
Mark's troops assisted the soldiers in pushing the crowd back to allow the tank column to position itself along the outside of the wall, and immediately the tide of refugees resumed.
The moment they were in position the tanks started firing on the Fallen, main guns thundering as they launched high velocity shells at them and tried, futilely, to keep them off of the civilians.
The Fallen quickly recognized the new threat, and dealt with it.
A squad of the support aircraft the Fallen called skiffs flew in low and began to fire bursts of energy at the tanks and soldiers, destroying most of them with only a few rounds.
The tanks that did survive scattered along with the civilians, wildly traversing and firing until they were ultimately destroyed, crushing the last hopes of the defenders.
A group of the remaining soldiers, including himself, still stood near the fortified wall, slowly being picked off by the hail of energy being projected at them by the fallen.
Eventually one of the Fallen's six legged tanks traversed it's gun towards them and fired a single shell, eliminating most of the defenders.
The camera zoomed in on him.
He had been throw ten feet back by the blast, but had miraculously survived, and took cover near a pile of destroyed cars, angrily and uselessly firing his rifle at the horde of fallen.
When his weapon ran dry he seemed to just give up, and knelt down to a dead soldier next to him, taking their dog tags into his hand and screaming aloud in agony.
An instant latter a stray round unceremoniously tore through him, dropping him and leaving him dead on the ground, right where his ghost would find him many years latter.
It was eerie and sickening to see his own corpse on camera. He had know he had died even before he came back to life, so he had no idea why it had such an effect on him. Something about seeing it with his own two eyes was entirely new and terrible.
He felt hollow and nauseous, like a corpse running on autopilot with no soul left to guide it. He almost couldn't watch any more, but he forced himself to.
The camera snapped to a feed of colony ships taking off, only a few being downed by the Fallen thanks to the defenders, and then to another camera inside the crew compartment of one of the ships.
The woman he sought, Amanda, was strapped into a crash seat, tears streaming down her face silently. As soon as the ship entered orbit, however, a pair of engineers came and began to escort crew members to nearby cryogenic chambers and seal them inside.
He watched as she begrudgingly allowed herself to be led to one of these chambers and be sealed inside.
The video then cut off.
Mark paused for a moment, staring at the blank screen
That was why the two of them had said such a heartfelt goodbye. They had both known one or both of them were going to die in the next few hours.
He had to know where she had gone. The more he saw her in pain the more he knew he had to find her.
"Rasputin, where was her ship heading?" He queried.
Another burst of Russian came from the console's speaker.
"Redacted," translated his Ghost.
Mark was crushed.
His sense of urgency was building by the second. He needed to find her, and clearly this computer just didn't understand.
He raised his fist to strike the console, but his ghost caught his hand mid swing with a beam of energy.
"Mark, stop!" It warned.
His fist was charged with the deadly electrify that he was so death afraid of, and immediately he dropped his hand, feeling it shake slightly as it returned to his side.
He needed to calm down, or he was going to kill someone or break something he couldn't replace, his own volatility frightening him once again.
He took a moment to recover, then looked back to the other two Guardians.
His eyes immediately met Derrick's, who was dead silent, his expression extremely pained.
Mark could tell he too was thinking about the one he had lost.
He stood there for a moment longer, his mouth closed tight before finally sighing and breaking his gaze from Mark's.
"I am so sorry," he said after a moment.
Mark nodded, unsure of what to say. Derrick was angry, and rightfully so, but hopefully he understood Mark a little better now.
Li slowly approached him and placed a caring hand on his shoulder.
"Hey," she said, her voice raised only slightly, "are you going to be ok?"
Her concern seemed much more genuine this time, her indifferent personality dropped for the moment.
He nodded, but honestly he wasn't sure how he felt. Seeing that woman, even for a brief moment, had made him feel just a little bit more relaxed, and now he knew they had been close, but it didn't bring him any closer to getting the weight of needing to find her off his chest.
She removed her hand smiled.
"I've seen the Traveler do some crazy shit Mark," she said, her tone confident, "if it wants you to find her then we'll find her, and she'll be fine, I'm sure of it."
Mark nodded his thanks. This new group he had was already starting to feel like a team, something his memory of the past told him was a very good thing.
Li removed her hand and he turned back to the console and found his Ghost still floating near it, examining a piece of the footage he hadn't spent much on, the Vex device.
"What have you got Ghost?" He asked, watching as it repeatedly zoomed and enhanced the image.
It seemed to be analyzing even the smallest most pixilated details of the device that Mark could hardly even recognize as anything other than groups of pixels on a screen much less advanced alien technology, but then again he had no idea just how advanced a Ghost's powers of analysis were.
He decided, given everything he had seen today, that they were probably much greater than his own.
"Nothing, it's just that this device is very interesting," said the Ghost, scanning over the minutiae of the screen once again, "I haven't seen anything like it used by the Vex before, and I have no idea why it would have been here before the collapse."
The Ghost quickly downloaded the footage and moved away from the console and transmated back into Mark's armor.
"I recommend we take this footage to the Awoken for analysis."
Mark looked blankly at the other two Guardians for a moment, before asking the obvious question.
"Awoken?" He asked.
Li and Derrick laughed slightly, finding some amusement in his lack of familiarity with his new world, but he found nothing funny about it.
His lack of knowledge of his surroundings made him concerned. He was fighting largely unknown enemies for the first time and acting on nothing buts instinct. Without anything else to go on he would be fighting blind, and that could easily get him killed.
"The Awoken are a race of former humans that live in a floating scrap called the Reef," said Li, "They know more about the Vex than anyone in the Tower."
She cracked a sly smile.
"They're also matriarchal, so I'm kind of a big deal there."
That earned a slight smile from Mark.
"Will they help us?" he asked.
Even as concerned as he was of not knowing who they were, he was even more concerned that they would know something that could help him find Amanda and withhold it.
"Hard to say," she continued, "they have in the past, but they're tricky. They don't do anything for free."
Mark frowned. He didn't need anyone getting in his way now because they wanted petty payment.
It was irrelevant though. He was going to find Amanda, and if these Awoken got in his way he would convince them to get out of it one way or another.
Mark quickly locked for transmat to the jumpship, not wanting to waste any time.
He turned to the other two Guardians and smiled slightly.
He knew why he cared for this woman now. He had a lead and the faintest grasp of why he had to find her.
Now it was time to start looking.
AN: if you have any thoughts, especially about the battle scene(I don't write as many of them as I'd like to) feel free to share them.
If not, I'll(hopefully) see you next week Guardians.