RDS I-V
Sorry for the condensed nature of this chapter, but I wanted to keep it short-ish.
Thank you for the reviews as well, the feedback is much appreciated.
Especially riesling who I will later thank with a blood sacrifice for being a badass and awesome in general. Seriously go read her stories, they are absolutely brilliant. Go right now, you can come back to my lame story later.
Okay, now that you've returned, this particular chapter has an actual title since it will be split into parts.
Chimerical Truth Pt.1
In between the soft rain, tranquil winds, and the crisp warmth of azul lava plumes it's easy to forget that Venus belonged to the Vex. At any given time those cybernetic monstrosities committed the most ground troops onto the planet surface. And to make matters worse, to make up for their lack of air support they blocked hyperspace lanes using space-time anomalies projected from their portals, effectively bottle-necking incoming jump-ships for days at a time.
When new information about a recoverable relic left within the Vault of Glass surfaced, the Vanguard's response was instantaneous. Under no circumstances could they leave it to the Vex. Jump-ships were prepped, while fire teams sortied. Guardians already on patrol converged in mass to the entrance of the Vault.
Unfortunately the Vex response to the mobilization was enormous. Progress into the strong hold was slow at best, as the soldiers of light were bombarded with the heaviest armaments the Vex had in their arsenal.
The downpour did nothing to sooth the Venusian soil as a hail of bullets and plasma fire chewed it to pieces. A large number of guardians were able to dig in and begin repelling the mechanized force before them. But others were lost to the chaos of battle, separated from their fire team and left to their own devices. A few still hoping that today was the time their legend would be born.
As Darkness began to shroud the battlefield, guardian resurrections became less and less frequent. It wasn't long before a rather plucky Warlock became acutely aware of that fact. It would only be a matter of time until he and the hand full of guardians around him were pushed into a truly tight spot.
Fortunately the fire team that should have lead the initial charge arrived, fashionably late, as they will claim. Elite Fire Team Spartan, Commander Zavala's personal strike team, swooped in with a hail of gunfire. The Vex mind wailed in anguish as its forces began to fall. Enraged by not just this reality's nearly impossible to kill organic populace but the ability for the tide to turn by the appearance of a mere six guardians.
The chaos of battle became raw as the Titans pushed forward. Pressured by their advance the mechanical collective rearranged it's forces, trying to split the soldiers of light and scatter their new found resolve.
The Warlock and his seasoned partner, a Huntress, were already on their last leg. They were currently suppressed by heavy fire when the Vex mind updated it's tactics.
Then, as if it some how knew they would perfectly vulnerable at that very moment, a Minotaur of enormous portion appeared at their blind side.
The Warlock uttered a loud, but distinct grunt of pain as the ogre like Vex grabbed his arm, instantly breaking it.
The Huntress wheeled around just in time to see him tossed over the cliff side, still angrily putting round after round of his scout rifle into the Minotaur before disappearing.
The Huntress had very little time to express dismay before a concussive force pushed her like a bug hitting the side of speeding sparrow.
The explosion from a dying Hydra flung the Huntress over the cliff as well, obliterating the damaged Minotaur beside her.
The descent felt slow, almost surreal as the Ishtar cliff side as well as any hope for survival, grew smaller with each passing second. Every corner of her body screamed with pain as she hit the ground, a feeling so horrifying, so excruciating that despite her best efforts she blacked out moments later.
The light piter pater of rain on her helm roused the fallen guardian. Thankfully the impact had not claimed her, but her relief did not last long as thoughts of the Warlock flooded her mind.
She tried in vain to right herself only to find the fall had completely severed her left leg. The Huntress surveyed the area but her metallic limb was nowhere to be found. But it was of little consequence, she had to find the Warlock.
The guardian began to claw her way across the sand and rubble, desperately scanning for any life signs, fortunately her search did not last long.
She found his body lying motionless on the beach, lapped at by the Venusian waves. Fear gripped the Huntress as she continued to make her way towards him. She denied any thought of his death as she moved forward.
But a cruel god, ghost, or whatever you may call it had other plans. A brisk wave finally grabbed hold of injured Warlock, drawing his form closer to the sea.
Dread washed over the other guardian as she watch her partner being pulled further and further away. She tried anything she could to quicken her pace, but the damage sustained from the fall was great. Her body creaked and complained as she continued to drag herself toward the Warlock.
And in a moment, her world was lost.
She watched helplessly as the tide sucked him in, finally removing his body from the beach. He seemed almost peaceful, floating on the water. The muffled sounds of battle becoming a dull back drop to the hushed beat of the rain, and the frantic pleading of the Huntress as she finally reached the water's edge.
She was so close, he was right there.
She had to go to him, pull him back. She couldn't, no she refused to lose him here. But moments before she dove head first into the water a familiar voice stopped her.
It was a voice that was not her own. It had been speaking to her for quite a while, but chose now to fully assert itself.
It warned her of her impending folly. The Huntress knew it spoke the truth, but still she ignored the voice. She couldn't just give up. Hell bent on continuing towards the water, the Huntress began to move, only this time the voice didn't just speak, it stopped her cold.
"Nilanna, please." the voice begged, "I can't let you do this, please stop."
"NO NO NO, Shut up! He's right there, I can save him!" the Huntress pleaded, watching as the Warlock drifted further away.
"I'm sorry, but I just can't" the voice sighed, silently struggling to keep the guardian still as the Huntress tore through bits of data and possible proxies, anything to regain control of her body.
"Please try and be rational, even if you could retrieve him, you could do nothing to revive him. Raj wouldn't want you to foolishly throw your life away like this. He'd want you to live, to continue the fight."
But the exo remained speechless as if broken. The reality of the voice's words where like a jagged knife thrust in her back.
The voice appeared before her crumpled form, it's single eye reflected as much sorrow as the exo's two.
He was gone, lost not just by humanity's war, but her lack of humanity as well.
For first time in this life, or even the one before, the Huntress cried; a scratchy, tearless, wail that echoed across the Ishtar range.
"RAJ!" the exo jumped awake, met not by a calm, tranquil room but a searing inferno.
The very bed she lay on was engulfed flames, shrouding the room in smoke. Confused and just a little bit disoriented, the crimson hunter rolled out of the bed, frantically searching the area, looking for the one she cared for as the flames began to spread.
Nila looked back towards the bed, fearful that an offhand suspicion had come to fruition, and unfortunately it had. Raj was still on the bed, set ablaze as his Radiance continued to destroy the surrounding room.
"Damnit Raj!" she shouted as she jumped back atop bed, cradling the human as his light continued flow.
"Wake up!" she begged, giving the male a light shake.
How was this even happening? He activated his ability while asleep, she'd never heard of such a thing. It was obvious he wasn't in control, so what could this be doing to his body, his Light?
"C'mon Raj, you have to wake up." she said, giving his cheek a pat. For a moment, she thought he had begun to stir. The flames spilling from his body began to subside as the radiant power began to wear off.
The exo still held the human close when two service Frames burst in to extinguish the fire. But to Nilanna the roar of the flames and the cold hiss of the foam was nothing bit a dull gurgle in the back of her mind.
Raj, her Raj still lay in her arms. Motionless, frozen, a cruel replication of the nightmare she had just been ripped from. The only sign of a true reality was his slow yet steady breathing.
What if she had done this to him somehow?
That singular thought continued to repeat itself even as the medical Frames came to collect the Warlock. The insistent questions about the fire and her own injuries fell on deaf ears as the exo looked helplessly at the human.
The inside of their fire team's private medical bay bustled with activity as the doctors on call attended to Raj's unconscious form. A single Frame attended to the moderate burns and damage suffered to the Huntress's metallic skin, probing her for information every now and again.
It was quite a while before the nurses began to disperse leaving a rather tired looking Awoken doctor standing at the foot of the exo's gurney.
"Nilanna?" he asked softly.
Her piercing, luminescent eyes darted from the Warlock, causing the doctor to jump slightly.
"I know how straight laced you can be." he smiled, "So I won't beat around bush, do you want the good news first or the bad news?"
"Bad news." she replied quickly, and almost too quiet to hear.
"He's in a coma." the doctor sighed, and despite her limited articulation, the exo's devastation was obvious.
"Don't fret, we can wake him. Believe it or not this has happened before, I'm not sure if you're aware but Raj is one of a few Warlocks that possess the ability to resurrect themselves."
Nila only nodded in response.
"Well for reasons we're still not sure of yet, when one attempts to use this power when unconscious, say when asleep, it leaves the user in a coma."
She nodded again, intent on learning as much as she could.
"Now, like I said, before we can wake him, but that's the difficult part."
The exo gave him a questioning look.
"We will require a specific adrenal solution that contains smart matter."
"Smart matter?" Nila groaned, well aware of how rare the substance was.
"Yes." He said with a sympathetic nod.
"There's one other thing as well." the doctor continued, his expression now a bit sullen. The exo sighed, she'd already been through so much in such a short time, she honestly wasn't up to anymore of this. She just wanted Raj back.
"An outside stimulus is what causes the victim to initiate their Radiance subconsciously." he gave the exo a stern look. "The burn marks on his chest are consistent with electrocution."
And just like that everything came to a screeching halt.
It was her.
She did this to him. It was because she was machine that Raj was hurt. This is was the reality unfiltered. No matter how much he claimed to love her, they were different and nothing would change that.
"Nilanna?" the doctor asked with a worried tone. He knew a short circuit on one of her sensory meshes was likely the cause; it was a common problem with her particular model, and easily remedied. But what he hadn't expected was such a violently negative reaction.
Her gaze could very well have bored a hole through his skull. Her body trembled as a vicious mixture of emotions swept across her form.
"You can't blame yourself for this, it was an accident." the doctor reassured her
"No it wasn't!" she snapped, before she curled up with her knees to her chest, completely intent on just sitting there. Maybe if she no longer moved, she could no longer hurt him.
The doctor could hurl kind and soothing word at her until the ends time for all she cared, it didn't change the fact that this was her fault. She was source of Raj's pain.
"This is not the Nilanna I know."
But the exo stayed silent, ignoring the words of her ghost.
"You've come so far, and yet you're willing to lose it all just because you let this little thing get to you?"
"How is this little?" the exo's murmured, it was response so heavy that Rave paused for a moment. Exo's could grieve, feel sadness and remorse. But this, this was something alien to her as the nightmare and reality continued to weave itself into a sadistic tapestry of fact.
Nilanna was crying.
A quite, withdrawn sob that shook her body as unbridled despair gripped her mind, threatening to suffocate whatever light was left in her soul.
"Well at least one thing is obvious now." her ghost smiled inwardly. "I can say for certain that you're truly in love with him."
The gynoid slowly looked back up, taken aback by Rave's statement. The ghost itself blinked into the room behind puff a blue dust as it considered her guardian.
"And this is what it got me," Nilanna grumbled as she looked back down toward the gurney.
"But you do love him." the ghost spoken as it drifted down, forcing the exo to look into its eye.
Nilanna slowly, if not dejectedly nodded.
"And it only took a coma to figure that out." Rave chided.
With speed even her ghost hadn't seen before, the Huntress snatched the machine out of the air, clutching tightly as rage welled in her eyes.
"You can be cross with me all you want Nilanna, but you're still the one sitting here doing nothing even after you've been told the solution to the problem." Rave said, unaffected by her guardian's outburst.
"He'll be safe her Nilanna, all we need smart matter. It lies somewhere out in there in the old world, hidden, but it's there." the doctor said with a reassuring smile.
"Thank you." she whispered as she released her ghost. She got up, slowly at first but with each step, she quickened her pace until she was sprinting back towards her room.
Geared up again, the exo spent not a second longer in her dorm as her mind began to churn out thoughts at a lightening pace.
She loved him...although she hadn't explicitly said it, at all actually. That didn't matter, because she felt something, it was certainly something new when the revelation hit her. It was different, an odd sensation that she couldn't quite place. But she knew now, beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was there.
When had it happened? She wasn't entirely sure, herself. The Huntress refused to believe that it had occurred during this horrifying event, that it was only the catalyst. Was it when he began to repair her various parts and components, dispelling the idea that he would revolted by her mechanical form.
No no, that was too early, even if she had a new found respect for the warlock.
Perhaps when they first became intimate? Although that moment turned into a double edge sword even if he ignored her selfishness. Was it when she realized that she harbored just the smallest bit of jealously when he was around other women in tower or out in the field?
It was astounding that she couldn't find the exact moment. Her systems always maintained a very meticulous log of status changes, coding edits, fluctuations in quantum processing, you name it.
Although what she felt was now truth, there would time to mull over it later. Right now she had to ask...
The Huntress paused for a moment as she observed the happenings in the Hall of Guardians. A large number of guardians stood on the back steps at attention while Commander Zavala barked at them. Ikora and Cadye stood beside him, adding to whatever issue he had brought up.
But that isn't what caught her eye. Even single solider of Light being chastised by the Vanguard was part of elite fire team, in fact there was at least one from all 7 squads.
At this point the Hunter Vanguard noticed Nila's arrival, he gave her an unreadable look before whispering something to Zavala, who surprisingly nodded in agreement.
He signaled the exo over to the group, prompting her to quickly traverse the room.
"I'm sorry about what happened to Raj, and you can kill me for being nosey later, but I really think you need to be a part of this mission." Cayde said in a low voice before he quickly steered her toward the City's commander.
He gave her cordial nod before turning to address the other guardians.
"For those of you who don't know, this is Nilanna-26 of Senior Fire Team Arsenal." Zavala's voice boomed. "Michelle, present this guardian with a concise briefing on the current mission as to educate her on the current situation." he demanded.
"Sir, yes sir!" a young Titan stepped forward with a salute. "Approximately 5 days ago we lost a research facticity to the Cabal tasked with examining the location of III-00 death! Two days before that a confirmed cache of items containing smart matter and red ore was detected!"
The tiny Titan took large breath before going full speed again. "We are to retake the facility, but there are currently no elite fire team leaders available, and all of us here have had very little field leadership experience, thus presenting a difficulty in establishing a chain of command!"
She saluted Zavala again be stepping back in line.
"Kiss ass." someone coughed, clearly poking fun at the Titan's overzealous and rather unnecessary antics.
Zavala glared at the group before turning to Nilanna.
"You have my condolences on your personal situation, but your track record, even under stress has been exemplary. But given the timing of your unique situation, Cayde-6 thought it fit that perhaps you should lead this strike team."
If Nilanna needed to breathe, it certainly would have been taken away. Her? Lead an elite squad? At any other time this would be a tremendous honor, but Raj...
"...would want you to do it." Rave finished her thoughts.
"You don't think I'd be...emotionally compromised?" Nila asked slowly.
"Even if you were, I'd still trust you to get the job done." Cayde answered as he put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
"Don't squander this chance when someone close is counting on you." Ikora added, "I have it on good authority that he would trust you with such a task without hesitation."
Nila couldn't help but smirk, of course Raj would trust her. That idiot, even if his life depended on it, he would trust her for anything...
"I accept on one condition." Nila spoke, "I'll need a small portion of the smart matter."
"And you shall have it." Zavala nodded, already expecting such a demand. The slightest smile dancing across his face, glad that Cayde's praise of this one's tenacity had not been off base.
"What are my constraints." the Huntress asked as she began to scrutinize the guardians before her.
"8 persons maximum, I want a strong yet precise squad; we can't risk losing any of the research on site." Zavala answered as he handed the exo a layout of the facility and the surrounding area.
The group before her had quite a few faces she was surprised to see in it. Obviously some were renown for being unruly and unhinged, but with others she found it odd that they lacked leadership experience.
Some of the legends here were larger than life. Condor, a brilliant Warlock that helped recover and decipher pieces of Toland's journal. The fabled sniper of Fire Team Blacklist, the one claimed to not possess a face. Even Torus Green, the monster of the Crucible.
If Raj hadn't been her absolute priority, she would have time to revel in the sheer number of possibilities before her.
She could forge the prefect team...
"But you already have a great team." a little voice in the back of mind spoke. That startled the exo quite a bit, this couldn't be be a good development in the slightest since it wasn't Rave, in fact the little voice sounded quite a bit like Raj…
"I'm going to be frank, you're imaging me right now." the little voice laughed, "which is fairly strange because this doesn't normally happen to exos. Unless an enormous, almost lethal amount of stress is being put on you subconscious, causing your subsystems to manifest the feedback.
Definitely not Rave.
"That would certainly explain why I sound like your lover but adhere to your speech pattern. Regardless of your new found insanity, your fire team is a brilliantly functioning group, don't abandon a proven system because of your fear of losing Raj. He doesn't need that right now, he needs you to be the rational, leveled headed machine that you are."
"You need guardians that best fit the roles of Fire Team Arsenal, and you need them to be on their best because the life of the man you love is at stake..."
"Well, it appears your internal performance subroutine is about to phase me out. You know what you have to do. Forget the rest, bring Raj back to us...please"
Only Cayde and the other exos noticed the lag in Nilanna's system. It was the frustrating product of the intrinsic battle between inorganic rational and organic emotion. A conflict each of them had experienced at one time or another.
A battle won by some and lost by others.
It was a part of them not many where willing to accept. Some considered it a weak human flaw, while others ignored it completely. But it always returned, and for most, it always hurt. It was the loss of a friend, the repercussions of a decision in combat, the pining for another.
An anomaly that lasted nanoseconds yet stained the mind for years, an intrusive electronic conscience.
It was the side effect of having an artificial mind based off of a natural one.
The true consequence of being a machine with a soul...
But when the Huntress came to, it was business as usual. No amounts of self-doubt, momentary insanity, or insubordinate guardians were going to deter her from her mission.
Build the team, take back the base, and claim the smart matter…
She would save Raj even if it killed her, the Raj that she loved from the bottom of her mechanical heart.