Chapter 4: Blood and Other Ties

Tikva gasped as she clawed her way out of the ventilation system in the Tower Hangar while carrying Xander's severed head triumphantly, about an hour after Cayde had sent her to track down the Hunter who had stolen it. She then accidentally landed on the lap of the Shipwright, Amanda Holliday.

"Um...he- ahem- hello," Amanda coughed as Tikva's landing kicked up dust into her nose.

"Sorry about that," Tikva coughed as she stood up and attempted to brush off as much dust from her hair. "Nice to see you again. How's my ship coming?"

"Your ship, and those of your friends, are now completely repaired," Amanda said once she'd composed herself.

"OK, thanks bye," Tikva replied, then rushed to Tower Watch.

Her Ghost appeared and said, "Good job. Hopefully the delay hasn't caused too much of an inconvenience for people."

"Yeah, hopefully," Tikva said, only to gasp, "Oh no! Now I've really gone and screwed it up."

"Why's tha- oh. If anyone asks, I'll deny knowing you," the Ghost said before disappearing.

In front of her was a long line of angry Guardians, lining up to deliver their bounties to a robot that stood there, headless and motionless. Ayiana and Calore, probably thinking that Tikva was still looking for Xander's head, attempted to calm the crowd.

One Guardian yelled, "I killed all these newbies with headshots while doing backflips in midair with a fusion rifle and now I can't get the Crucible Reputation for that extremely easy bounty!"

Another pleaded, "This bounty...finding that Wolf was the only chance I had of winning the Queen's love!"

"I really don't want Eris staring at me while I try to explain why I couldn't complete her bounties," a third Guardian trembled.

"This would never happen if the New Monarchy was in charge!" someone else cried.

"Oh yeah? If Dead Orbit was in charge, we'd have evacuated to a safer galaxy by now!" another person yelled and then started punching the New Monarchy supporter.

Soon, an all out brawl broke out in the streets of the Tower, and Ayiana and Calore were helplessly pulled into the middle of it. Tikva tossed Xander's head into the crowd so they would fight over that instead, then double jumped and motioned for them to follow her into the Tower Hangar as veteran Guardians broke up the fight.

"That was close!" Tikva panted once the three of them were leaning against a wall in the upstairs lounge above the docking bay.

"Can I ask how you became a human dust bunny?" Ayiana wondered as she gently brushed some of it off of Tikva's hair and from behind her ears, then off the couch next to her when it landed there.

"You don't want to know, trust me- achoo!" Tikva exclaimed, then brushed some dust that had gotten onto Ayiana's shoulder pads and gauntlets when she sneezed.

"Guardian, Amanda just notified me that your Fireteam's ships are in the docking bay and ready for take off," Calore's Ghost said, then worked with Tikva's Ghost to vacuum the remaining dust off of the young Hunter's armor.

"Excellent. Any suggestions on where we should start looking for clues about what the Fallen are up to?" Calore asked.

"Calore doesn't have a plan? I have to put this day down on my calendar," Ayiana laughed. "I think we should go patrol the Moon again."

"That's where we all got shot at last time, if I remember correctly," Calore said, a new plan formulating in his artificial brain that would definitely be better than hers. "It would be a suicide mission, especially with a newborn Guardian on our team. Shouldn't we go back to Earth and try and find more Archons, then gather intelligence about what they're doing on the Moon before going back there?"

While Tikva fumed in silence at being called a newborn again, Ayiana replied, "That's not a bad suggestion, Calore, and a pretty sensible one under most circumstances. But when we were patrolling the Moon, something stuck out at me. Most of the time, when we escape the Moon, the Fallen don't bother following us. Why this time? My hunch is that they were afraid we were on to something that they really didn't want us finding out about and reporting back to the City. So if we retrace our steps from our last patrol, we may be able to uncover what they were doing. It might also be related to this Causeway business."

"It's definitely a hunch, but if there's a chance that we could hit the heart of the Archons' operation, that would be more expedient," Calore said after digesting her logic.

"Maybe we might find out where Dakar is as well," Tikva suggested.

"Yes, there is that as well," Ayiana smiled at her human friend. "Besides, we've gotta put the greenhorn through her paces sometime," she added and patted Tikva on the back.

Tikva laughed sarcastically, but then the exciting possibilities of this mission hit her and she squealed, "We're really going to the Moon! Yaaaay!" and jumped up and down for joy.

"What's so exciting about the Moon?" Calore wondered. "It's a piece of rock that orbits Earth."

"It's in space! SPACE! I've never been to space before," Tikva giggled, jumping around in her own skin before making a caffeinated beeline to the ship, jumping up and down the whole way there while Ayiana and Calore jogged after her.

Tikva smiled again when their ships touched down on the chalky dust below them. Then as she beheld the middle of the cold vacuum outstretched before her, the Milky Way and the remnants of the International Space Station becoming an iridescent soup before her eyes while she spun around and around.

"Remember, Guardian, we're not here to stargaze," her Ghost said.

"Killjoy, as usual," Tikva muttered when she landed on the ground, making moon dust angels for a few seconds. "I know there's a mission to be had and bad guys to be killed, etcetera, posthaste and so forth, but guys, we should make a day to come back here and actually enjoy our next trip to the Moon! Well, when our lives aren't being threatened of course."

"That sounds a plan," Ayiana laughed with her fellow Guardian, now even dustier than before, and helped her up. "I've always wanted to-"

"We started out on Archer's Line. We should head there first," Calore said, then got out his Sparrow and sliced through the lunar landscape, silently letting his team know that they should do the same.

No sooner had they set out to the distinctive pipeline that jutted out from the crater beneath it than a Thrall fell on top of Tikva's Sparrow. Before it could attack her, she pressed the windshield wiper controls and plastic paddles knocked it off into a rock below, plastering it with alien viscera.

"You alright?" Calore wondered.

"Yeah, I'm fine," the Hunter replied.

Ayiana immediately cocked her head to one side, rapidly approached the corpse once she realized there was no danger of attack from a pack of Hive, then dipped her finger in the blue fluid coming from the body and had her Ghost take a sample.

"Something's wrong with this Thrall," she muttered. "They usually don't move above ground."

"You're right, Guardian," her Ghost said once it had done a quick analysis of the blood. "It appears that the chemical composition of this Thrall's blood was altered. I don't know with what exactly, but it feels...familiar somehow. I'll need to bring the rest of the sample to the City as soon as possible. Their scientists will probably be able to tell us more."

"That Acolyte over there is kind of acting weird as well," Tikva said, recalling its name from one of the books she'd read in the Tower Library before shooting it in the head. It didn't flinch much and fell over listlessly instead of making the trademark Hive screech of rage.

"The same blue substance is replacing their blood," Ayiana said. "But...why?"

"That's what we'll need to find ou- Fallen!" Calore cried as an ambush of two Captains and dozens of Dregs and Vandals came flooding down from the hill above.

The team dived behind a series of long dead fusion reactors and computers inside the building and then threw a few tables as cover. This wouldn't hold them for very long, but once the Fallen horde broke inside, they would be forced to go through such a narrow entrance that their numbers could be thinned with ease.

"Is this what you'd think you'd be doing on your first trip outside Earth?" Ayiana asked after she blasted a Vandal that was stuck on Tikva's knife.

"No, I'd wanted to bring a picnic basket and make a day of it. But it sure comes close!" Tikva laughed before throwing her skip grenade onto a Captain. It annoyed him as much as a series of mosquito bites would a human, and he grabbed her by the throat and threw her against a computer bank.

The resulting shocks disrupted her shields for a few seconds, but before the Captain could strike the Hunter staggered him with a throwing knife and Calore jumped towards him and punched the knife through his throat and the top of his head.

When Tikva caught and cleaned it, she smirked, "That was badass!" and high fived Calore.

"I suppose if that's the way you wish to term a particularly aesthetically pleasing kill..." Calore smiled. "Anyway, thank you."

This caused the rest of the Fallen in his group to scatter, but the Fireteam only had a few moments of reprieve before a group double the size of the one they had just fought off charged them. They readied their weapons, let the grim feeling that their first mission could easily be their only mission sink in...

Suddenly, a brilliant flash of pure light, probably from a flash grenade, blinded many of the Fallen, and even forced the Guardians to cover their eyes. The Captains and other stronger Fallen roared in defiance as they attempted to find the source of the attack, and one Captain dual wielding swords dived after Ayiana. Then another Captain charged in, but instead of attacking the Guardians it picked up the first Captain and broke his enemy's spine on his knees as the rest of the Fallen scattered into the embrace of the Darkness.

"Do not shoot! We are on same side!" the Captain cried and slowly lowered his weapons.

"Forgive us for being a little skeptical," Calore said as he pressed his shotgun against the head of the Fallen. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"My name is Variks of House Judgement," the Captain replied with a bow. "You are the Guardians of the Great Machine, yes?"

Ayiana stated, "Yes we are. What do you need us to do?"

While was confused about why he was surveying them as if he wasn't sure if they were actually Guardians or if this was a trap, she figured that he referred to the Traveler, as that was the popular parlance for it.

"I have a source, yes? Inside the Archon Order's base here. Go to Summoning Pits. They will try to kill you. Kill them back."

Before the Fireteam could ask him anything else, Variks was gone.

"Well, that was...interesting," Tikva smiled.

Ayiana smirked at that attempt to put a good spin on what they'd just encountered.

"Certainly," Calore said as he grimly set to the task of entering the Temple. Calore's Ghost appeared outside his armor and gave a worried whirr.

Kolee could barely keep his knees from knocking in the middle of the crowd of Dregs and Vandals as he contemplated the chaos that would break out within moments, all thanks to him.

"Get up and serve the Queen of the Reef, and the spark of Light within you, or be consumed by the Darkness," Variks had told him without any semblance of nicety when the rebellious Captain found Kolee sleeping on a pile of Hive bones in a cave that morning. "Your choice."

Kolee had mulled his options over for several hours. Being a single cog within the machine that was the Fallen race had been drilled into him as the most glorious duty that anyone could be a part of.

"All of us were equally born Fallen," he'd muttered in his mother tongue in the cave, far from anyone else, "and all of us must give our lives to the Fallen that we might be equally reborn."

He'd seen the cruel fates of those few who betrayed that mantra by defying any one of the Houses and were captured, and it had made his stomach turn to think of it.

The moment he'd picked up those drawing instruments, though, he realized that a part of him, both within and without his body, had left him. He couldn't put his claws on it, but this thing he'd been tied to had kept him centered, warm, stable. Now that something had taken it away, he was empty. But he also realized in that cave that whatever it was had given false comfort and its absence returned feeling to his skin and sight to his eyes. Suddenly, every detail of the world around him became more vivid, and once his tense stomach finally settled, he knew exactly what he had to do.

And so he'd accepted the fool Captain's offer, and been whisked away to a completely cold, barren rock far from all he'd ever known on a mission that would likely result in his death. The only comfort he took was that he had nothing much to lose.

Within minutes of arriving on the Moon, he gasped in his helmet as he found the nearest large procession of Fallen. He recognized Archon Vokuna the Enforcer leading the way, followed by a dozen Captains and almost a hundred Vandals, Dregs, and Shanks. The crowd was so large that it was trivial to simply walk over and follow them to wherever they were headed. As he pressed the button that would track his location for Variks to find, he'd wondered why he'd gotten all worked up about it if it was this ridiculously easy to complete his mission.

The only Dreg who got wise to the fact that he wasn't normally part of this group had lent him a spare ritual cloak to help him blend in, and Kolee was thankful that his helmet masked the sound of his relieved exhalations.

But now it was much harder to do so as the prospect of having to fight or flee anywhere from three to six angry Guardians loomed on the horizon.

Even more terrifying to him, enough to freeze him in place when he knew to run, was seeing the horrible things the rest of those who were pledged to the Fallen were doing.

And who was screaming.

Ayiana, Calore, and Tikva were crouched down on a ridge just above the Hellmouth as they observed the patrols of the guards in front of them. They had crossed nearly the entirety of the Ocean of Storms to get here, and now they knew there was no possibility of turning back. Either they stopped the Fallen, or-. Nobody wanted to think about or, but even Tikva was crestfallen into total silence.

Ayiana stammered, "So...all out assault then? Are you sure?"

"Wait, what?" Calore's Ghost demanded. "When I heard you thinking about that in your head, I thought you were kidding! Surely there has to be a way to do this without attracting needless attention. Calore, it's your duty to find a better solution! Do not put-"

"I know what my duty is," Calore said. "The fact of the matter is that this entire complex is too heavily guarded to sneak into. We have to attack now, or we might be too late to halt their plans."

"I agree," Tikva whispered.

"But are you ready?" Calore practically demanded of his younger squadmate.

"Sir, yes sir!" Tikva exclaimed, as still as her powered off Sparrow.

Calore led the way with another Strike attack that flattened several Fallen guards at once. Once the two women jumped into the cavernous maw below them, a giant, dark, metallic chalice slowly rose from the ground and began firing on all three of them at the same time, driving them back into cover.

"What in the Traveler is that thing?!" Tikva asked.

"A Shrieker! Shoot it when it opens its core!" Ayiana yelled back.

A few minutes of sponging up their bullets later, the Shrieker screeched, exploding and leaving unstable and blinding purple globules everywhere. A few Wizards emerged in its stead, but like the Thrall they'd seen before, these Wizards floated listlessly and were careless and sluggish in throwing their attacks at the Guardians. As such, mainly due to Ayiana and Calore's knowledge of their weaknesses, they were dispatched with much less difficulty than they normally would have been, as were a few dozen Thralls that scrambled forward as quickly as they could but with less tenacity than in the past.

The Guardians moved into the maw of the lunar cave so cautiously that even the lunar regolith underneath their dragging boots sounded nervous.

For what seemed like a half dozen rooms, they encountered nothing but hollowed out caverns, seething stalactites, a chain going through the floor and ceiling, and the ominous and imposing darkness that lay, unending and relentless, at their feet. None of them realized just how imposing it could be until Tikva collapsed onto her knees and crossed her arms over her chest.

"I- can't- breeeathe!" Tikva gasped and then squeaked.

"I can feel it trying to crush my chest too, and I don't even breathe," Calore muttered. "This must be a Darkness Zone. Be very careful, Guardian. We can't afford to have any of your usual theatrics leading to all of us getting consumed." He trudged forward.

"He didn't mean it like that, Tikva. C'mon, get up," Ayiana said and rubbed her friend's armored neck while throwing a glare at Calore.

"He's right though. I'll probably fuck this up too," Tikva said in weak rasps.

"No you won't. You hear that, you Fallen scumbags?!" Ayiana yelled and pulled Tikva up. "We're gonna get up, and we're gonna kick all your asses!"

The cave walls replied, "Kick all your asses! Asses!"

"The cave is rooting for us," Tikva chuckled as she willed her feet to walk onwards.

"That's the Tikva I know! Are you sure you don't need to rest for a little bit longer?" Ayiana wondered with one arm around the Hunter's shoulder. She could sense the horrors of this place reaching out from beyond the Void to try to corrupt her soul even now so she would use her powers for ill, but she held firm after years of honing her knowledge of the arcane. She couldn't imagine how much turmoil Tikva's kind and innocent heart was in right now, when she had no such spiritual defenses.

"N-no. I can do this. I said I was ready, so I'm ready," Tikva firmly told the Warlock, then reluctantly broke their embrace to push ever onward.

"You know, I get why you don't feel you can tell them if you're not feeling well, Guardian. But you can tell

"I. Said. I'm ready. OK?" Tikva snapped. The Ghost knew her thoughts were full of fear and doubt gave the artificial equivalent of a sigh and then went back into her armor.

After a few more minutes of walking, they came upon a room two long staircases on either side and two balconies adjoining the center of the room. Tikva silently glanced at Calore as she peered inside, who acknowledged with an equally stony nod that t. There was only the barest of standing room for all the Fallen and Hive watching what appeared to be an arcane ritual taking place.

"Where is the Causeway, Awoken filth? Do not test my patience again!" the Archon demanded as a Captain muttered a few words then took a knife and slashed at something.

"For the thousandth time, if I knew what this fucking Causeway was, I would never tell you where it is!" a Guardian yelled while it drained some of his blood into a wooden bowl.

Ayiana bit her tongue to stop herself from sobbing when she gazed in disbelief at the owner of the voice, then balled up her fists until her fingertips bled inside her gloves.

"Dakar," she shuddered into her chest. "He's alive...badly burned and bleeding, but alive."

"That's- that's good news, right? What's our plan to get him out of here?" Tikva asked.

At the same time, she saw the captured Hive pack members get frenzied at the smell of the Light in Dakar's blood as all three of their Ghosts clandestinely recorded the scene. The chained Wizards were given vials taken from the bowl to drink as they were kept in place by two listless Ogres surrounded by Cursed and Hallowed Thralls, who were set to strike if any Guardians were detected. Just before the Wizards could sip the blood, however, Vokuna placed a droplet of blue liquid within it. Once the Wizards drank, they became listless, then halted an attack on the ritual chamber by a group of enraged Acolytes, Knights, and Thralls within seconds, forcing them too to obey.

Tikva asked in an even tinier voice, "I said, what's our plan?"

"He heard you," Tikva's Ghost told her in her head. "His Ghost just told me, though, that he's thinking of retreating to the City without trying to free Dakar."

Ayiana thought, "WHAT?! But he'll die!"

"There's no need to think so loud," Ayiana's little light told her Hunter. "I'll let him explain."

Calore tiptoed back down the hallway and, once the coast was clear, said as softly as his voice chip could manage, "The recorded information that our Ghosts carry from this event will enable us to prepare the City for the Fallen's plans to enslave the Hive. That intelligence is too valuable to risk all three of our lives over Dakar's."

"But he's our Fireteam member, and you've never given up on me or him before now, so why this moment?" Ayiana demanded.

"Believe me, I wish I could save him. But this time we don't have a choice."

"Because of the enemy's numbers?" Ayiana almost screamed, but turned into a low, hoarse cry. "I saw you personally kill three dozen Vex within a minute with your bare hands and your Fist of Havoc at the Battle of Maat Mons."

"Back then, we didn't have a newborn to consider and they didn't have a Guardian as a hostage."

"Is that what Guardians are supposed to be now, huh? Afraid to take risks in case things might get dangerous?"

"Dakar would make the same choice for the good of the group and of us all if he were in my position, and you know that as well as I do."

"No he wouldn't. This kind of calculation is typical of you, though, you...you..."

"Say it. Go ahead," Calore replied, yellow cybernetic eyes narrowing through blue slits.

"Robot."

The Exo crossed his arms and said nothing further.

Tikva had been rooted to the spot, unable to choose who was right and say anything that would change anyone's minds.

"Hunters don't back down from anything just because it's too hard," Cayde-6 had told her only hours before. And here she was, doing just that by not stepping up and doing something.

In a spat of self pity before she accidentally fell off the Tower, she'd told herself tha if she'd never been revived it would be better for everybody. If Calore ordered her to run away from this fight, the Speaker would most likely understand- after all, her Fireteam was outnumbered and fighting against impossible numbers of enemies while attempting to secure the safety of the City, which was, after all, their job. But from then on, she would have never forgiven herself for failing at her life's new (and so far only real) goal outside of merely protecting the Solar System.

And that was being there for the people who had been there for her when she needed it most. While Ayiana continued to rant as quietly as she could against an immovable Calore, she made her choice.

At that moment, Vokuna growled at the puny Hunter kneeled before him "Since no one is coming for you and you have no information to offer, we shall send you to the Darkness as an offering so that our campaign will receive its favor."

Kolee pressed a button and then attached a grenade to a Cursed Thrall, his heart racing as he hoped he was doing the right thing saving this human he didn't even know.

"BEHOLD! I am Crota, your angry god. Destroy these Fallen interlopers, or I will grind your bones to make my bread!" Tikva howled as she brandished a Knight's sword like it was the Sword of Crota as a lantern cast an enormous, and hoped to the Traveler that her Ghost could translate into Hive and that the Hive were too strung out on Guardian blood to notice that Crota had been dead for at least several months.

Her point was backed up when Kolee detonated a grenade, causing all the Cursed and Hallowed Thralls to explode and taking out many of the Fallen. In response, the dazed and confused Hive retreated with as much haste as they could at the loud noise.

"Destroy he-RAAAAGH!" Vokuna started to say, until he was shot in the head by a Golden Gun blast and then hastily retreated to lick his wounds. The other two shots severely blinded an Ogre before it could use its void energy to incinerate her.

Tikvas was also able to cut a bloody path to where Dakar was through many of the Dregs and Vandals that attempted to oppose her using the Sword and her own pent up anger, and then she cried, "Can you stand up?"

"I, I think so," Dakar coughed and rose to his feet, then shot an Acolyte attempting to attack Tikva in the head with his scout rifle.

When the two of them attempted to flee together, however, a Knight impaled Tikva through the back with his sword, dissolving her into light that was then slowly squeezed by the surrounding Darkness. Dakar knifed it to death with his Arc Blade super, but the second Ogre blasted most of his shields away with a single Void burst and Dregs and enslaved Thralls surrounded him, closing in for the kill.

The Hunter stood there in confusion for a second after he realized a Fallen, yes, a Fallen had shot his fellow Dregs with a shrapnel launcher and was using his arm to urge him towards the exit while Ayiana and Calore covered his route of retreat.

Dakar quickly revived Tikva, and then picked up the stunned Hunter woman, slung her over his shoulder, and triple jumped over to where they were.

"Traitor!" a dozen other Fallen cried and chased poor Kolee through the streets, leaving all the rest to be dispatched by the three Guardians. Shouts and gunfire bounced away into the nothingness unbearable silence claimed its place again.

Dakar laid Tikva down on the ground and immediately was hugged by Ayiana.

"Easy, sis- I still have a few scrapes I need to walk off," Dakar said and gently pushed her off, jocular even

"Sorry...I, I..."

"I know. It's good to see you too. But we should really get going. Your friend here saved my life. She almost got consumed and might need to go to the medbay, though."

"I'm fine, really," Tikva said and then coughed.

Ayiana shot a skeptical look at the friend who'd given her back her spiritual brother, but Tikva's Ghost emerged and said, "Vitals are normal, and she doesn't have any injuries that her shields can't repair soon."

In the midst of all this, Dakar patted Calore on the back and said, "Good to see you too, you big bucket of bolts."

Calore said nothing and took the team to orbit, dispatching any other pleasantries. Once again, Tikva passed out as her worried Ghost brought her back to her ship, but she could almost hear the deafening silence coming from both of the other ships.

"You have done well. I call you Kolee of House Judgement," Variks clicked as he found Kolee face down on the ground in a cavern. "Continue to keep your tracker with you, yes? Then I shall call you when I have need of you again."

The Captain stepped over his reluctant ally and was gone before the poor Dreg could even blink. Kolee groaned and fell asleep against a wall, hoping that he could get some rest in before he'd have to run from the Fallen machine (that now definitely knew he was to be expunged for his sins) once more.

This was going to be a long rest of his life.