Chapter Three: Shattered Coast
It had felt like hours as Karen continued looking around the broken city, or what was left of it, the coast was a broken mess. Buildings hanging by a strand in certain places and none that could help her get off Venus any faster.
Her stomach rumbled softly and she laid a hand on it, frowning softly as she sighed, and no food in sight either.
"Damnit…" She swore softly, her adventure hadn't yielded any results since landing and she doubted she would find anything, but she kept at it, not giving up quite yet.
Soon she came upon a large U shaped structure along the edge of the coast, large angelic statue sitting at the entrance like a guardian that reached towards the heavens, as if to ask for the stars for assistance, something Karen wished she had.
Looking at the entrance, she wasn't sure if she should continue, but something inside her urged her further, so she walked inside to find a hole had been blasted open to the lower basement.
Stepping down into the hole, she found herself standing in almost ice cold waters, sending shivers up her bare skinned leg since most of her suit was ripped, something she wished she could fix.
But she continued forward, ignoring the cold as best she could as she sloshed on through.
Eventually, she made it to another hole in the ground that led upwards, the room it led into was a quiet looking library, another statue at its center, a motif for this building or planet in general, but it provided a small amount of comfort.
Looking around the place, Nature was beginning to take back the building itself. Most of the books were worn down from water dripping down from the cracks above, but Karen found a few books worth salvaging and Ghost understood full well what she wanted, digitalizing the books for safe storage.
Karen however, started to grow cold, her ignoring of the water didn't stop her body temperature from lowering, shivering as she decided to collect a few books and set up camp in the room.
Laying the books in a pile, Ghost sent out a spark from his central eye to light them, providing Karen with warmth, only wishing she could find food somewhere, let alone fuel.
The weight of what had all happened finally caught up to Karen however as tears welled up in her eyes, soon she began to sob and curled up, knee's against her chin as she just watched the flames flicker and dance, she wished desperately to remember who she was before all this, but nothing came to her.
Ghost wasn't sure what to do to comfort Karen, he could only simulate emotions, not experience or feel them, something he wished he could do sometimes to be of more use to these humans.
After Karen's breakdown, a feint noise caught her attention, causing her to carefully move to the edge of the statue she set up at and look towards the back entrance, something was coming and it sounded metallic, steel clacking against stone as it drew ever closer.
The noise revealed itself, a large metallic creature stood in the doorway, its actions precise and calculation as it moved with robotic precision, another one of its kind showed up behind it. The things had large fanned heads with a central eye and a beak like face.
Tall and slender with bronze bodies, these machines were looking for something in the room, patrolling as they slowly walked around, Karen had long since kicked out the flames as best she could, a few crackling embers remained.
Ghost knew full well what these were from other Guardians, Vex, powerful enigmatic machines hell bent on total control, with a lapse of judgement, Ghost forgot to inform Karen of the problems she might have to face on Venus, Vex being one such threat.
Karen meanwhile held her hands over her mouth as she watched the Vex move down the steps slowly, looking left and right, emotionless, and she doubted they'd be very helpful.
They drew closer to her position with every step, she had nowhere to go either, trapped behind the statue as these things were almost upon her, all Karen could do was close her eyes and pray that they passed her by.
But without any luck, they came to her position, stepping in front of her, making odd screeching noises as they looked down upon her, weapons charging up, ready to fire when a blast rang out in the room, Karen opened her eyes after awhile when death hadn't come to find one of the machines upper body was missing completely.
The other Vex soldier turned towards the intruder and opened fire, the unknown shooter moved quickly and fired back, Karen just tried her best to not get hit as stone was blasted to bits with every shot, raining down on her.
Soon the shooter took out the last Vex soldier and sighed with relief, Karen opening her eyes again to see another Ghost appearing in this persons hand like a lamp.
"Yep, looks like another Guardian was down here after all…not that Cayde told me that anyone was out this far…" The person said, revealing to be a female by voice, although Karen still wasn't sure with all the strange things that have been going on lately. This women had a long trench coat, white in color all over with a helmet that reminded Karen of Eagles.
This woman removed her helmet and whipped sweat from her brow before looking at Karen with glowing blue eyes, she had also seen that her skin was of a light-ish blue color as well as having purple hair.
"Are you alright Guardian?" The women asked, holding out her hand to assist Karen up.
Karen nodded and looked down at the broken machines before her, smoke billowing from their bodies before she looked back at this strange woman.
"Thank you for saving my life…" Karen finally said, letting out a soft sigh of relief.
The women nodded with a lopsided grin, "The name's Ariel by the way."
Karen smiled and held out her hand to shake, Ariel took it and shook it, "I'm Karen." She said before a sound outside caught Ariel's attention, placing a finger against her ear as someone else talked to her.
Ariel's face turned grim as she slid her helmet back on, "We need to get out of here, things got a little troublesome outside…" She said
Karen wasn't sure what was going on, but she followed Ariel through a set of corridors before leading outside a courtyard, in its center was a strange ship that had crashed and was being taken by nature.
On top of the crashed vessel were two other Guardians firing down below at an unknown enemy pooling out of several buildings, Karen and Ariel meeting up with these new strangers.
"Can you fire a gun?" Ariel said, holding out a pistol to Karen, she took it and nodded slowly, not admitting that she had only fired a weapon once.
Soon the whole group was firing down at more of those strange machines that almost attacked Karen earlier, a whole army was filing out two at a time.
"Evac is almost here boss." One of the Guardians said to Ariel, one of them pulled out a rocket launcher of some kind and fired down upon the group below, taking out a huge group of them.
"God Damnit…the Vex here are getting worse!" Ariel cursed, firing at a few as well as Karen firing a few shaky shots at the Vex, soon however she could hear a feint hum as a dropship flew over the courtyard, circling it before going down low, opening up to reveal other soldiers to assist.
Karen and the others soon filed into the dropship and lifted off, giving Karen the time to sit down upon the deck and sighing with relief, free from that hell down below.
"Let Cayde know that we're heading back to the Tower…we have new company." Ariel spoke to the pilot.
Karen wasn't sure what she had gotten herself into.