Chapter 7

Attacker Unknown

Voidwalker Maximus

Mars was beautiful but dangerous. There was something about the red, sloping sand that gave it a sort of picturesque quality, especially from the top of one of its many mountains. To get to said mountains, one would have to go through waves of Cabal and Vex, coloring the sand in colors that had become increasingly natural to it since its invasion, one that Charli had witnessed first hand, or at least experienced the tail end of it. I felt bad bringing her here, but the Darkness didn't care if it faced a rookie just learning how to use a gun or an experienced veteran with precise aim. It killed all it failed to corrupt.

I led the way on my Sparrow with Charli and Arla following just outside of the contrail and V of sand whipped up as I raced by. Olympus Mons loomed in the distance, and just over a mile from here was the Cabal base we were going to bust into, grab as much intel as we could before the servers wipe themselves, and get out (hopefully) in one piece. I could only wish anything could be that simple. As I'd learned in my time in the AEA and as a Guardian, nothing ever was.

We swerved around the boulder that took Charli and me out the last time we were here and rocketed towards what we believed was an entrance to the base. If it wasn't, there was not telling what it led to and how that tank wound up coming after us. This time however, no tanks materialized and we approached the bulkhead easily.

It looked like it was cut directly into the side of the cliff face, one that extended at least a hundred feet above our heads if not more, which made it a great area for some sort of ambush. The bulkhead itself was entirely composed of a thick and seemingly impenetrable alloy similar to the durasteel many of the heavier doors in the City were made of, but this looked denser, more advanced. One of the perks of being a militarial society, especially when you go up against an enemy that refuses to die, technological advancements around every corner. There was a long slit at the lower left hand corner that extended to the opposing corner above us at a constant degree. This slit was only interrupted by a circular lock with lights that made a red square within the circular shape. The door remained shut tight as we approached, no creaks or groans. The sand tapered off into a metal ramp that gave off a choir of thuds as we walked towards the door. This was definitely a Cabal base, but I wasn't sure which part of one we were standing in front of. It very well could be a garage of some sort or perhaps a hangar; both were similar in purpose, but one would have multiple tanks on the other side whilst the other would have inactive machines.

"Any insight Charli?" Arla asked as she studied door.

Charli was keeping her eyes peeled on the cliff that hung above us, as if she was expecting an ambush from above. "Not really," she replied. "I honestly expected the Cabal to have come after us by now. It's not like them to allow three enemies to simply walk up to their door."

"Agreed," I replied. "They usually seek out there enemies rather than the other way around."

Arla took a few steps back from the bulkhead, still looking it over from every possible angle. "Could they be under orders not to come out?"

"Maybe," I said. "Could they be protecting some sort of new technology or other secret?"

"That's definitely not like them," Charli inserted, giving up on any attack from above. If they were going to do one, boulders would have rained from above already. "The Cabal would use a new technology as soon as they developed it way back when, and I'm almost positive that hasn't changed."

"Probably hasn't," Arla concurred. "However, we need to get in there. There's been a lot more mobilization on their part, and the Vanguard doesn't like it."

"What about getting rid of the Fallen and Hive on Earth?" Charli questioned. "It makes more sense to clear the homefront and then focus your efforts elsewhere."

"Because the Cabal are able to invade, conquer, and destroy entire worlds simply because said planets get in there way and have resources they can use for more weapons and armor. With the Vex pretty much out of the picture, the Cabal are the most immediate threat. Pirates and insects don't really concern the Vanguard as much as an actual Empire."

"Oh."

"Let's focus on this door shall we," I added, trying to bring everyone back to the task at hand.

"I've got it," Starco said as he materialized and floated towards the door, positioning himself in front of the circular lock and doing various scans on it.

"I'll get a look from above," Arla said as she pulled out a black sidearm holstered on her thigh. A second later, she fired a grappling hook from it and rocketed towards the top of the cliff. After a few seconds, she declared, "Got a couple of dead bodies up here. Cabal. They're partially buried in the sand, so they've been here sometime before that sandstorm passed through.

"Can we get a feed?" I asked. Arla's reply came in the form of a small box that essentially shared what her helmet was picking up, a first person glimpse into the world from her eyes. There were two dead Legionaries in the feed, both lying in dried pools of their own body juices, the sand beneath them stained an ugly blue-green. One was facing upward while the other was lying face-first in the sand. "Do you see any bullet holes or scorch marks?"

Arla put away her rifle and crouched down to get a better look. She worked her hands and nimble fingers across their armor as she tried to find evidence of some kind of shot. As she inched her way across the Legionary with its face in the ground, her fingers caught on something momentarily. "I got something," she declared over the comms. She climbed on the creature's back and investigated the place where her fingers caught. It was a hole, but it was vertically elongated and not very wide, a strange shape for a plasma burn or bullet hole. Suddenly, Arla pulled out one of her combat knife and slowly inserted the blade into the slit. Her blade was slightly smaller than the slit but otherwise confirmed what Arla was likely suspecting. "This one was stabbed with a blade of some sort. Not a Guardian though. Stargazer's not picking up any sign of light that isn't our own."

"What about the other one?" I asked.

Arla moved off the first Legionary and started looking over the one lying face-up. Its helmet had a rather nasty gash in its top with dried blood on the edges. The main plates of its armor also had wide slashes with large stains similar to those on the helmet. "Looks like this one got hacked rather than just simply stabbed. To me it looks like a sneak attack. Whatever attacked one got that one from the back, this one saw it, and then tried to fight…"

A loud metallic THUD echoed through the air. I spun on my heel and immediately looked at the door. Now, the lights were blue, and the circle began to spin for a few seconds before it slowed down again. "Arla, stay up there!" I commanded. "Charli get to cover!"

"Roger," both said in surprising unison.

I drew the rifle Dea gave me and took cover on the edge of the bulkhead just as it split open with a hiss. Several long seconds passed in absolute silence as we waited for whatever opened the door to show itself, but nothing came, just the softened sounds of Charli and Arla's breathing over the comms. Carefully, I peered around the edge of the bulkhead to see who or what was in there. "Move in," I whispered. "Arla watch our six." The feed from Arla's helmet cut out, and we proceeded forward, crouched and careful with our weapons ready to fire at the slightest inkling of danger. Bright lights immediately flashed on as we stepped into what looked like the piece of the base devoted solely to housing tanks. At least a dozen tanks lined each side, but the dead Cabal littering the ground far outnumbered the vehicles, some lying dead on top of some of the tanks. Several of the tanks were skewed to one side or another, signs of massive damage across several pieces of their plating. Something big had happened in here, and I had the feeling it had something to do with our mystery killer.

I walked over to the nearest body and gave it a quick once-over. It didn't take me long to see that the injuries it sustained were very similar to those of the Legionaries on top. Large gashes where a blade slashed through their armor and tore away their life littered not only this body but also that of those around it. The main gashes were across the chest and then one through the head. The room was a gruesome sight that was definitely not for the weak of heart or stomach. Arla eventually joined us wordlessly and kept her eyes peeled for movement just like Charli and me. "What's gotta happen for them to look like this?" Charli commented. "It's like something to a hack and slash spree through here."

"Arla," I said. "Do you know if Heksis has been out here recently?"

"No," she responded after a moment of thought. We were approaching the edge of this spacious room and the beginning of a much smaller hallway. By the looks of it, the hallway also had several bodies sprawled out on its floor or leaned up against its walls. "He's been at the Tower or in the City the last couple days. Probably taking care of a few errands. You don't think…?"

I turned my head and looked at Arla. "The way these Cabal died remind me a lot of what you say his handiwork is like, especially when we gets mad."

Arla stooped over a body, feeling the gash in its armor with her own fingers before rubbing the dry blood off of her fingers with her thumb. "These cuts are clean enough," she concluded. "Heksis makes clean cuts that kill his targets quickly with little to no suffering unless, like you said, he gets mad. Still, the cuts don't look like his." She stood up and looked at more of the bodies.

"Let's keep moving," I said. We moved quickly and quietly to the hallway and proceeded one by one, marking each corner as we they came up. We traveled deeper and deeper into the base, the elevation taking a very noticeable dip and the Darkness thickening to the point it felt like a light weight pressing down on my shoulders. With each step and new hallway, the number of bodies seemed to decrease until it was just one or two and then none. The light grew nonexistent, forcing us to use the lights on our helmets because we didn't want to risk having our Ghosts shot. Eerie didn't even begin to describe the atmosphere in that base. I doubted whatever did this was still here, but I'd been wrong plenty of times before.

We'd gone down three levels by now, and the paths were beginning to split off increasingly more often. We kept moving straight as much as we could, but eventually we'd meet a wall and be forced to turn around or go a different direction. Almost all of the doors we'd seen thus far had been closed, likely a failsafe in case someone or something got in here, one of these was the server room, but Starco hadn't seen a sign that stated which room it was exactly. Much of their signs were in their coded military language that probably made perfect sense to a Legionary or Phalanx but practically nothing to a Ghost and absolutely nothing to someone like Arla or me. We tried asking Charli to make high or low of the symbols that roughly translated to a military alphabet of terms that in itself was a code, but she reminded us that "By and large, [she was] a pilot, not infantry." She didn't say it harshly, but it was the way she said it that tipped me, and possibly Arla off, like she wasn't telling us something. My guess is that she was still trying to figure out who she was, something I didn't struggle with all that much. I instead had to convince myself that I was the same, just given a similar but different calling, a little more politically involved than I was accustomed to.

Starco's voice interrupted my thoughts. It surprised me enough to cause me to stop walking for a seconds. I didn't hear what he said, but Arla noticed my small jump. "Everything alright?"

"Yeah. Just got surprised that's all."

"By what?" Arla and Charli stopped walking as well, coming alongside me almost in unison.

"Starco."

Silence took over for a short moment as Arla and Charli apparently wanted me to elaborate. Before I could speak, the Ghost materialized in a flash of light in front of me. "I think I found the server room. One floor below us. I caught onto a weak data stream, not sure what it is, but it may explain what exactly happened here."

"I'm a little more interested in seeing a little action," Charli stated flatly, checking the capsule in her hand cannon.

"Let's find this intel before we find some action," Arla said, her voice slightly uneasy. "I don't like the look of this place after whatever happened here."

Once again, Starco interrupted before I could speak. "Well then, let's check out this server room before this data stream grows cold, or anyone's trigger finger twitches. I get the feeling that whatever did this is still here. After all, that door was closed."

"Agreed," I replied. I turned to the Titan and Huntress at my side."Keep your weapons ready," I warned. "If that thing is still here, we have to put it down before we end up like the Cabal." I shifted the weight of my gun in my hands to ensure I still had a good grip on it. Both of them nodded and seemed to clutch their weapons all the tighter. They were nervous and perhaps slightly unnerved. The Cabal were known to be tough, just as Charli and I had seen earlier, but the evidence here indicated a short and rather one-sided fight. I doubted that there had been only one attacker, but the fact we were yet to run across a body of an attacker was rather curious. Either they had cleaned up any of their dead, or they were simply that tough. I leaned more towards the former.

Starco set a diamond-shaped marker on a door down the hallway, one that was remarkably small for something the Cabal would use. The three of us could fit easily, but a Legionary, Phalanx, or other standard Cabal soldier would have almost no way of actually getting in without shedding almost all of their armor and a large percent of their weight. As with many of the other doors, this one was locked down and was not about to budge. Starco materialized and began trying to hack his way in without me saying a word. "You see the door?" I asked the others.

"It's right in front of me," Charli snipped but immediately seemed to realize her mistake just as she said it.

I shed the comment. "No, look at the size of the door."

Arla took a step closer and put a hand on the door, sliding it up and door its dust-covered surface that made it seem more red-orange than the actual gray metal it was made of. "It's smaller."

"Exactly. Normal Cabal can't fit through these doors…"

Arla continued my statement as she backed away from the door. "...Which means that the Psions used this door."

"Starco, you still picking up that data stream?"

"It's still there," he responded. "The signal seems to be emanating from somewhere in that room. Below it specifically, but I don't think there are any more stairs for us to take. At least none that pop up on my scans."

"What about getting it open?" I asked. The Ghost backed up from the door and shook itself side to side. "No good," he replied. "Whatever's keeping it closed does not want to let us in."

"Is the power on this floor still on?" Charli asked. We'd seen power still working on the first couple of floors, but the almost absolute darkness, aside from our lights, made it look as though the power had been cut off or largely shut down.

"Seems like it," her Ghost replied in a deceptively stern and confident voice. "I can feel the data stream too. Maybe they're using some sort of wireless power grid."

"Well, what about the door?" Arla said, pressing her fingers on the edge of each side and trying to force it open. "We need...to get...inside," Arla grunted as she tried to open it herself. The door didn't even budge before her hands slipped, nearly throwing her on her back both times. The second time, Charli caught her by the arm just before she hit the ground. Arla thanked her, stood up, and crossed her arms, slightly frustrated.

Charli stepped forward and gestured to the door. "Could we overload it with a power source of our own?"

I looked at Arla. "I don't have anything better."

"Neither do I. Let's see this thing that nearly killed everyone in the room."

Charli stepped in front of the door. Centering herself, she clenched and shook her right fist. Immediately, bright arcs of electricity raced up her arm and then spread across the door when she touched it. She too tried to pry the door open just in case it was jammed. Just as it appeared she was making some progress, she slipped on something and landed on her back. The arcs stopped just as quickly as they began as she landed solidly on her back. Arla and I immediately rushed to her and helped her back on her feet. "You alright?" I asked.

Back on her feet, Charli brushed our hands away. "I'm fine. That door definitely wants to open; something's in the way though, a misalignment perhaps."

Now it was my turn to take a look at the door. Unlike the others, I felt along the bottom, and when I got about a foot from the right side, I knew why the door was stuck. "Can I get a light over here?" I called out. "I found something." A light was shone right where I was. I couldn't believe we hadn't noticed it before. One the lower edge of the door frame was a largely dried pool of blue-green blood, seemingly fresh puddles pooling out from where Charli had opened the door ever so slightly.

"That's disgusting," Charli muttered.

"Welcome to ground combat," Arla said to her quietly. "Bit different from the air huh? Little less glamorous?" Charli didn't respond. "Now that we know what's blocking it from opening, I have an idea."

"Shoot," I responded.

Arla grabbed an object from her belt and set it down carefully next to the door. As soon as she did, a red beam emitted from the device and made a small circle on the door. "Now I just need a bullet." Arla drew the pistol from her thigh and pulled the slide back, causing a single bullet to fly out. She sntatched it out of the air and told us to stand back. Charli and I walked back a few yards to give Arla some space. She too walked back while keeping an eye on her device. A few feet behind Arla, both of us crouched down. The Huntress looked back at us for a moment, receiving a nod from me and then responding with her own and a raised left hand. On that hand, she counted down three, two, one...She reared back her arm and threw the bullet in a direct line straight into the laser beam, retreating to where we were not even a second after. There was an instantaneous flash of light and explosion as the device detonated.

I pointed my weapon and brought up the circular, holographic sights and pointed them where the explosion was, fully expecting Psions or something to pour out of the door. Everything was still for several seconds as we awaited a squad of Cabal to attack, but nothing came. The Psions must have been dead as well. I kept my eye on the door through the sights and motioned for Arla and Charli to follow me closely. Soundlessly, I approached the door, the blast had definitely done some damage to it and the wall, the door hadn't opened all the way. Instead, the bottom part broke off and created sharp jagged edges that tilted quite a ways inward. There was a small amount of dim lighting within the room. Arla crouched on the other side of the door while Charli pressed up against the wall a few inches from me. As expected, there was no movement on the other side of the door. I glanced down at the opening the explosion had created. There metal peeled inward for about the first foot and a half before the angle straightened. Looking at the bottom of the frame, I still couldn't see what was leaking out that blood, but I knew that somewhere in the shredded metal there was a Psion, possibly charred beyond recognition given the blast. I looked at Arla. "Help me push this metal up a little more," I told her, keeping my voice quiet. "Charli, go prone and keep an eye on the gap between us." Both nodded in agreement. Arla put her weapon on its holster as I did with mine and placed two hands on the bent metal. I had no idea if we could actually push hard enough to move it, but it was worth a shot. "3...2...1…" I counted, and after one, we both pushed on the metal simultaneously. It groaned obnoxiously loud, the sound echoing down the hall, but we eventually were able to move the gap upward almost eight inches, just enough for us to get through one at the time if we crawled through.

I secured my weapon on my back. "I'll go first," I said to Arla and Charli. I crouched down and edged my way underneath the bent and twisted metal. Once through, I gave the room a swift once over before signaling Arla and Charli through. At first glance, I couldn't necessarily tell what this room was for. What looked like some of console lined the walls of this small room with metal chairs in front of each one. The consoles were literally blue lights in the wall that stuck out prominently against the dimness of the room. White strips of overheads cast a ghostly glow in the air that seemed to only cast more shadow than it did illumination. Other than the chairs against the consoles, the room was essentially a short pathway that led to what I presumed to be a stairwell at the back. The only things that marred the otherwise clear pathway to the back were crumpled black masses that looked oddly enough like bodies, a clear sign that our friends had gotten in here as well.

I marked the room with my weapon, sweeping it from side to side until I was sure it was clear. I couldn't shake the sense that it wasn't though. Perhaps it was the presence of the bodies. "Everything alright?" Charli asked over the radio.

I kept scanning the room for movement. "Come on through, but keep your weapons up. Something tells me we aren't alone."

"Thank goodness," Charli whispered, relieved. "Thought I was going crazy." One of them patted me lightly on the back when they both were through and ready to keep moving. Nothing had moved during the short time it took them to come through, but the relative silence only made me warier. We approached one of the bodies slowly.

It was indeed a Psion, its petite frame and strange armor being a dead giveaway, and the wounds it had sustained were very similar to that of its much larger brethren but more aggressive and lethal. This body had a single stab through the head. Looking around, the position of the bodies hinted at a single attacker that they had surrounded. As usual though, no evidence of what actually did this. Done with our observations, we kept moving towards the back of the room where two doors diverged in a small alcove. After taking a moment to translate, Starco came back that the left one was what we were looking for, the server room. I waited for the door to automatically slide open, but it didn't budge in the slightest. Taking the chance to do something, Charli stepped forward and pried the door open manually, grabbing it on the right edge and breaking its locks easily. The metal screeched loudly as it was forcefully moved to the left, but that didn't concern me. If nothing came after us after that explosion, I doubted something could have heard that. "Thanks," I said with a nod as we each passed through the door and descended the steps into the server room.

Like the room above it, the server room was extremely compact. The stairs we were on were on the back of the room. The central walkway was flanked by black towers that looked to have consoles like the ones upstairs. Opposite us and in the center of the front wall was a large monitor with a normally-sized Cabal door beneath it. "Starco," I ordered. "See if you can get that door opened and figure out what in the world went on here."

"Stargazer, give him a hand," Arla added. Charli remained quiet. The Ghosts materialized and went to opposite sides of the room, feverishly scanning the towers of equipment and gathering all the data they could. "What's the rush?" I asked.

"I know what was causing the data stream now. It wasn't outgoing, it was inbound to the server. It's a virus copying each file, sending the copies, and then deleting the originals."

"Sending it where?" I demanded. This situation had just become all the more important.

"I-I don't know. It's bouncing the outgoing signal all over the place in what looks like random receiving points. Some of the data streams end while other loop until they too reach some sort of end, like they are being deleted."

"Stargazer, can you focus on tracking the where?"

"On it!" Arla's Ghost confirmed almost immediately.

"Starco, pull what you can and find a way to get this door open."

"I'm giving it my best Maximus."

Nervous seconds ticked away as the streams of light that ushered forth from the pair of Ghosts oscillated in frequency, slowing down for a few seconds before speeding back up. All the while, Arla, Charli, and I kept flicking our attention from the door, to the stairs, to any place about the room as if expecting something to jump out at us any moment now. This room had no cover, so we were sitting ducks should something slide down the steps.

Suddenly, the Ghosts disappeared and a single thought replaced all others: RUN! I took a few tentative steps backward. "What happened?" I yelled, my voice echoing off the walls. As if in answer, the entire room filled with a flashing red light and a blaring alarm. "What did you do?"

"The virus detected me in the system and immediately started the self destruct sequence. We need to get out of here before the core detonates!" His voice was panicked. Starco was clearly worried about the situation.

Arla and Charli were quickly backpedaling from the server room and starting to move up the steps. "Max! We don't have time. Get moving!"

"Go!" I shouted to them. "I'm right behind you." I took a few steps to sell it before I took out my weapon. This virus wasn't getting any farther. I whipped out a scatter grenade and tossed it at the left side of the room while I whipped out Dea's rifle and began to spray the remaining servers with arc-infused bullets. An explosion suddenly rocked the floor just as I finished. "GET OUT OF HERE!" Starco shouted in my head. "I DIDN'T REVIVE YOU JUST TO DIE HERE!"

"Fine, fine…" I said. I tore my eyes away from the servers and blinked to the top of the stairs, beginning my sprint just as I touched the ground. Charli and Arla were just a couple dozen feet ahead of me. What had taken the best part of two hours to investigate was now flying by us in a blur that took only minutes to ascend. Explosions continued to rock the ground as we sprinted to the only exit we could knew of.

Slowly but surely, I was gaining on the other two. Either they were slowing down, or I was going faster, but neither prospect was very good. I couldn't carry them along with me nor was I going to just leave them behind. Another, much closer, explosion violently shook the ground beneath us, throwing Arla and Charli to the ground while throwing me stumbling to the point of nearly falling as well. I steadied myself and continued running, determining my path through the murky black by the momentary flashes of red light.

I was starting to see the outlines of multiple tanks as we approached the hangar, but suddenly my world spun around smashed into the metal ground. Trying to scramble to my feet, I struggled to get my right foot underneath me. Quickly glancing down at it, I realized that I had tripped on a dead Legionary. I tried to kick my foot out but then realized that its hand was actually grabbing my foot. The beast was alive after all and trying to take me down along with it! I tried to grab my rifle or the fusion rifle, but my precarious position on the ground only made it more difficult to grab them off my back. 'Wait a minute,' I thought.

I reached a hand behind my back, grabbed the butt of the yellow rifle, and stopped struggling. The Legionary's strong arm suddenly yanked my leg and shot me forward. Using the ground's friction and my momentum, I deactivated the magnetic locks on the rifle and let the ground slide it off my back for me. Just as I neared the beast's raised fist, I let out several bursts into its head. It rolled over dead, and with a couple powerful kicks of the leg, I was free. I hauled myself to my feet and slung the rifle back over my shoulder and secured it with the locks. I couldn't see Charli or Arla in the darkness, but I continued forward until I saw that the door we had entered from had suddenly closed. Another explosion rocked the entire building again, tossing us like ragdolls to the floor until the quakes subsided a few seconds later. This place was about to blow with us still inside of it. Whoever set that virus up clearly didn't want any witnesses escaping.

"I'm opening the door!" I shouted to Charli and Arla just as I entered the hangar.

"How?" Arla's shout echoed.

"Trust me!" I was already growing orbs in both of my hands, letting the energy surge through my being until it became an unquenchable fire. At this fever pitch, I leaped into the air and unleashed three massive balls of purple energy that exploded when they touched the door preventing our escape. Arla and Charli bolted through the hole without any second thought just as I touched the ground, still sprinting as fast as I could. I jumped and blinked forward another few yards, but this time I didn't touch the ground. Just as I hit the apex of my jump after the blink, an overwhelming force threw my feet in front of me and carried me up and out of the opened door.

I watched the Martian sand become smaller as I flew. It was then that I shut my eyes and refused to open them.