Hey! The third chapter!
Also, also, CAYDE IS COMING!
If you see a spelling/grammar mistake or a sentence that doesn't seem to make sense, let me know so I can fix it!
And Thanks to gajeel-of-iron for not only beta-reading this story but for being my very first Beta Reader!
The moment that Fireteam Rumbler arrived in low orbit above Mercury, they could tell that something was… wrong. A feeling they all felt that just screamed at them that there was a wrongness going on.
It was probably the Fallen Ketch that was hanging in the lower atmosphere. That certainly shouldn't have been there.
Nor should the fleet of Hive ships, or the army of Cabal, or the stupidly high number of taken blights peppering the landscape. However, they were here on converted Mercury.
So, when Fireteam Rumbler landed, Ikaldys made sure to keep her ship nearby for any potential support they might have needed whilst everyone else sent theirs back into high orbit. Setting out on foot for the remaining leg of their journey, Rumbler began having to slog their way through the Mercurian landscape as the ever-present Vex had not lessened their presence even with all of the invaders.
As Summer, Ikaldys, Kurux and Serpent drew closer to the marker beacon that popped up on their helmet HUDs, the more foes they began to run into. Brutal firefights broke out with the four Guardians doing their best to overcome them.
"Is it just me, or are these guys feeling a little more desperate than usual?" Serpent asked aloud. She snapped her fingers to fire a dancing trio of blazing lights into a Shank drone.
"Aren't they always?" Ikaldys said.
Backflipping off a protruding bit of metal, Ikaldys used her airtime to pepper the Fallen captain below her with gunfire from all four of her hand cannons. Purple, golden, and cyan lights flared as each cannon discharged a different element, except for the first which simply shot regular rounds.
"Look, I'm sure we'll get the answers we're looking for if we keep going," Kurux said.
"How? We can't transmat sparrows this far down." Serpent stole a glance up where only the smallest of the incredibly close Sun's rays were only just peeking through the intense metal lattice that the Vex had constructed. "We're right down in the trenches. It'll take forever to further."
A buzzing noise captured the attention of all the Guardians. A platoon of Fallen Dregs on top of Pike speeder bikes rounded the corner and began discharging the Arc energy cannons mounted on either side of the bikes' hoods. Ducking behind cover, everyone looked at Serpent.
"What?!" She shouted.
"Can you say that we won't find any more ammo? I need to top off my reserves." Summer grinned behind the visor of her helmet.
"Oh suck on an egg, Summer!"
Summer, to her credit, began cackling like a gremlin and began doing consecutive backward cartwheels until she reached near a Pike. There, she leapt higher and twirled in the air, her pure white hunter cloak flaring out as knives began to shoot out of the tiny alabaster tornado. The piloting dregs had little time to even realize what was going on, let alone react to the oncoming blades. Two knives sunk deep into the craniums of an equal number of the pilots, their bodies slumping as death quickly overtook them. Without clutching the handles or putting in any effort to stay upright, the Fallen corpses slid off the hoverbikes and tumbled across the ground.
Summer changed her orientation in midair with a second Hunter hop, smoothly landing on the bike and revving the engine. Taking that as a signal, Serpent leapt up and glided over the battle gracefully as if skating on ice, and much like Summer she landed squarely on the second vacant Pike.
Kurux and Ikaldys, still without Pikes, moved to procure their own rides.
Kurux, to his credit as a titan, was straightforward and bull-headed in his execution. Sidestepping a bike charging at him, Kurux's hand struck out like an attacking snake and caught the Dreg's head. With but a relatively effortless squeeze from Kurux, the head popped like an overripe fruit and the resulting carcass tossed aside as the rind. The tallest member by default of Fireteam Rumbler then hastily jogged to the immobile pike, getting on and revving the engine Kurux pulled up his new ride to sit beside Summer and Serpent.
"Where's Ikaldys?" he asked, looking for their last member who had set off to get a pike at the same time he had.
"Oh god, she's doing the thing again." Serpent pointed a convulsing dreg pilot.
In short order, the dreg's spasms became more and more violent. This climaxed in the dreg's body bursting apart in a stream of red mist and gore, like some nightmarish pinata for psychopaths. In their place was Ikaldys, completely safe, unharmed, and most of all, unstained. A staple power of the Templars was the ability to shift into a sort of 'sub dimension', or netherworld as the Templars themselves had nicknamed it. But the relevance of the ability currently came in the fact that Angela had learnt early on in her experience as a Guardian, that when a Templar came back, most matter they were intersecting had to be…
Displaced.
"That will never not creep me the fuck out." Serpent told Ikaldys as the second-smallest team member pulled up beside everyone else. Ikaldys just gave Serpent one of her patented double shrugs in response. Revving the engine, the crackle of the eliksni guardian's hover bike's thrusters roared and she peeled off ahead of the rest of her friends. Summer, not to be outdone, revved hers harder and used a sloping piece of Vex construction to make a jump off. Leaning in her seat she went for a backflip over her friends, setting off the race to the objective site.
2 TAKE 2
The journey to the location supplied to the yet-present Master Rahool proved to never have a dull moment. Even when staying on their skiffs and avoiding combat, opting to blaze through any ongoing firefights without participation, the chaos and carnage was rampant amongst the sandy metal wastes of Mercury.
Corpses of all known enemies of the Last City populated the ground whilst their livelier brethren continued to kill any other opposing group that they could see. A Hive knight and Fallen captain locked swords in an intense duel balanced precariously on a thin walkway above, the muzzle flashes of Vex torch hammers and Cabal slug throwers were like fireworks whenever the team went through a dark tunnel.
"Approaching site now, difficult terrain ahead. Time to get walking, you lot. Or, well, climbing I should say." Serpent's Ghost, Bean, told everyone from their comfy position in Serpent's digital backpack.
Summer and Ikaldys disembarked first from their spots behind Serpent and Kurux respectively, which was where they were after Summer had crashed her pike into Ikaldys' during her flip.
Much to the disappointment of everyone, Bean was correct in their words. They would have to climb up what looked like a vertical cliff face of Vex metal. Sure, not the most arduous task for guardians of their calibre. Or any guardian for that matter. And it wouldn't be dangerous either because, you know, immortality. However, instead of them all climbing up the wall, a different idea was proposed.
"Heave-ho, Kurux!" Ikaldys chanted. While sitting on Kurux's shoulders, piggy-back style, while he dug his hands into the wall and climbed. And she wasn't the only one on Kurux, either. Both Summer and Serpent had attached themselves to the bulky man as he did all the work. Serpent had tied a length of rope between them and used her Warlock glide to become essentially weightless to Kurux, and Summer clung to his back like a little snow-white monkey.
"Aghk! Ikaldys! Get your butt out of my face!"
"No! This is revenge!"
"For what?!"
"For those tight pants, you wear all the time! It's distracting!"
"Hgpholivrethbiouronbwrub…!" Summer spluttered, completely embarrassed by the comment Ikaldys made. If there was one thing the tiny eliksni guardian had, it sure as hell wasn't dignity. Feeling no shame, Serpent began laughing up at Summer with a mocking edge to her tone.
"If, *nygh!* none of you are going to help climb, please be quiet!" Kurux commanded, digging his hands into divots in the wall, and punching in new ones when there weren't any.
The climb lasted for a while longer until Kurux finally approached the top of the cliff face. When about only a solid leap away from the top, Ikaldys clambered off of Kurux's shoulders and scuttled up the remaining distance, getting over the ledge before popping her helmeted head back over to look at her teammates.
"And she couldn't've done that from the start…" Kurux cursed under his breath. Shortly later, he finished the climb himself and deposited Summer from his back before reeling up the floating Serpent. Now all atop the plateau, they redrew their weapons and continued the march.
Said march didn't last for very long before the team was ducking behind cover and shooting over it. From what their HUDs said, they weren't too far from their objective, but the remaining journey there would be hard on account of the army-sized forces that warred from them to there.
"Okay Summer, what's the plan?" Serpent asked.
Despite appearing to outsiders that Kurux was the leader of Fireteam Rumbler, it was in fact Summer who was in command. Because despite her proclivities towards chaos and impulsive action, she kept a steady head when on the job and proved she was the guardian the legends made her out to be.
"We hug the left wall until we reach the Vex encampment below the overhang. Zac, can you tell what they've got going on over there?" Summer commanded like an experienced general.
Zac's voice crackled out of the whole team's comms. "Disruption beacon, it's stopping any aircraft from getting any closer than to drop troops off. Prevents aerial support.
Summer nodded, already making her decision before Zac had even finished. "We disable it. Then Kaldy can bring in The Glittering bandit for some aerial ordinance."
Serpent, Kurux and Ikaldys resolutely nodded and raised their weapons to ready. Summer raised her own hand cannon, pointing upwards and just to the side of her head, and with her other hand she counted down with her fingers. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… go!
The team vaulted the cover, weapons snapping to shoulder height and muzzles flashing while they spat lead, elemental energy, and - in Serpent's case – nanite clusters that ate away at their targets. They pushed through the left flank as best they could and wouldn't lie by saying it was an easy task. Whilst it was true that the enemies of darkness were already battling one another, a fair contingent of them chose to break away and focus their attention, especially on the guardians. Rumbler replied in full force.
Leading the pack, Kurux stowed his Chaperone on his back and lowered his body as he sped up, pumping his arms more to move faster. Pulling ahead of the pack, he turned his body so that his shoulder was in front and would take the brunt of what he was about to do. With bolts of powerful energy spraying off him, Kurux sunk his shoulder into a unit of Cabal phalanx with their shields raised. Such a fact was disregarded as the titan ploughed through them as if they were nothing more than a field of soft grass, ready to be mowed.
Unrelenting, Kurux leapt up and soared over the bodies he had just made. Taking out his sleek, shining and silver slug shotgun from his back again, his boots landed on a hulking cabal colossus and caused the brute among brutes to stumble under the titan's weight. Kurux watched the rhino-space-turtle's eyes widen in shock and fear as he levelled the Chaperone to their forehead. Kurux smirked behind his helmet as the trigger was pulled, punching a slug right through the cabal's head with such force it crumpled the armour around their nape.
Following in the wake of Kurux's destructive path, none of his teammates were shirking their share of corpse-making. Serpent in particular was complimenting the gunfire from Outbreak Prime, that sat in her grip, with hurtles of grape-coloured voids of pure destruction. With just how many enemies there were, and just how fast the warlock siphoned energy from the death of them, Serpent was almost spending more time fastballing grenades than she was shooting foes.
And lastly, breaking formation as liberally as they pleased, were Summer and Ikaldys. With Ikaldys' skirmisher-like approach and Summer's assignation like one, they combined their combat approaches to dive right into the thick of the battle to cause havoc. A deadly dance of bullets, blades and claws appeared wherever the two of them did. Popping in and out of reality with Summer's blink and Ikaldys' phase shift left it up to guesswork, at best, to predict where they were going to show up next. More than once, a soldier saw the brief glimpse of a hand cannon or four before the loaded munitions perforated their meaty, and sometimes metallic, heads.
The team swiftly made it to the jammer and got right to work. With Summer, Kurux and Serpent providing supporting fire, Ikaldys slid back the cover on her compact wrist-mounted computer affixed to her lower left arm. Whilst it was mainly a Guardian's ghost's job to handle the more technical and fiddly bits of missions, Ikaldys had proved time and time again that she could more than make up the difference.
And when both she and Gooseberry were working on something…
"Done!" Ikaldys said after less than a minute at the Vex interface, clamping the wrist computer back shut. But not before sending off a signal to her remodelled fallen skiff, The Glittering bandit, to come and start shooting anything without a light signature.
Now with vehicle backup, the time spent fighting towards the objective zone was greatly reduced. But in no way was it ever considered a pushover by the experienced fireteam. Despite there not being any foes of particular notoriety, there were some difficult and known combatants being spotted on the battlefield. And that wasn't even to mention the hordes and hordes of rank-and-file troops that marched on one another to try and somehow suppress an opposition. Summer and the team had no such orders or desires to get involved in that fruitless struggle. Well, maybe Summer did, but now wasn't the time. They had a goal, and they were going to stick with it. Wanton death and violence could come later, now was a time for restraint and dedication.
And so, feet were moved, bullets were exchanged, and lives were taken. And even lost on more than one occasion for Fireteam Rumbler, both Serpent and Ikaldys falling to focused fire after pulling off particularly destructive plays from their charged supers. The further they got, the denser the battle seemed to become. More high-ranking units, multiple different tanks and turrets, and the sky dotted with ships like raindrops on a pane of glass. More than once when reaching for additional ammunition, they feel nothing between their grasps.
But at last, after what felt like forever, they had reached their goal where the fighting was the thickest. Sliding behind a crumpled, once wall-like structure Summer and her friends looked at what they had come all this way for.
"is that… A Braytech site?" Kurux asked from Summer's right. He was peeking his whole head over the wall, one hand on the cover and the other holding a rangefinder up to his helmet.
"Give it here." Serpent held up her hand for Kurux to pass the telescopic device to. He obliged and gave it to her, looking past the warlock to Summer and Ikaldys, who was on the former's right.
"Ikaldys, do you and Goose still have those Bray master keycodes we looted from the SIVA site?"
Ikaldys nodded. Summer could see where Kurux was going and picked up from there.
"So, we use those to slip through the front doors, activate whatever security systems we find, and figure out just what in the name of the Traveler Rahool was thinking to find here." Summer dictated as she popped a mostly empty hand cannon cartridge out of Thorn and replaced it with a fully-loaded one.
"Yeah… I don't think it'll be that simple," Serpent broke in. "Those Taken are starting to make some sort of gate right next to the door – somehow – so if we don't get in soon ourselves we may have some bigger problems to fry if they decided to bring anything particularly nasty out." Serpent removed the device from her face to return it to Kurux. "And that isn't even to mention all the AA and AO guns they've got going on. We're not getting any backup for this job until all the uglies clean out."
Summer nodded. "Right then. It's time to-"
"Incoming transmission from the Tower, guardians." Zac interrupted. Zac's interruption was also interrupted, however, when Serpent's dome was removed by a Cabal sniper.
"PREPARING FOR REVIVE." The metallic voice of Serpent's ghost, Bean, declared. A brief pause and flash of light later left a fully repaired Serpent cursing and in no good mood.
"Hello, guardians." Rahool's voice said as his transmission line fully connected. "Looking at your position you're already close to the site where-"
"Rahool! What the hell did you get us into?!" Serpent seethed.
2 TAKE 2
After Rahool had left, forgetting standard mission guidelines of not leaving the line unattended, Summer had decided they push up to the doors and crack into the site whilst they waited for someone with more combat experience to get on the comms.
"Kurux! Barricade!" Summer ordered.
"Right!" Kurux replied, obeying and thrusting his shoulder forward to manifest another piece of instant cover for the team.
Summer turned to Ikaldys. "Kaldy! Get the door!"
"Righty! This won't be easy though, from what I can say about our… interactions, with Raz." Ikaldys referred to the old, Russian-speaking Warmind, who was also a creation of Braytech. And she was right, opening the door was not done in any short order, and in the end, it took Ikaldys having to use Kurux to rip open the control interface's panel and rewire the whole machine. This took much longer than was desired, and Summer did end up getting riddled with gunfire after straying too far from cover, but the doors did eventually open if only halfway.
Ikaldys was the first to slip through, ushering the others to quickly follow. Summer nodded to Serpent, who nodded back and went in second. Summer then put a hand on Kurux's shoulder that didn't house the oversized pauldron. Kurux grunted in return, his attention still primarily on the hordes he was firing suppressing shots at. Summer understood the meaning; She goes first and then Kurux would follow. Typical Titan, walls of the team until the end.
Once they had all gotten safely inside, Ikaldys and Kurux wrenched the heavy doors back shut after the entrance didn't close by itself. Summer looked to find Serpent, but only found her further into what was turning out to be an entire complex. Serpent, to her credit as a warlock, had affixed Outbreak Prime to her back-mounted mag holster and taken out a data pad. Bean was out and scanning every piece of tech in sight, immediately transmitting all of it to Serpent's pad.
Summer leaned over Serpent's shoulder to get a look, as the latter hummed and ahhh-ed at what she was reading. It all just looked like a bunch of incoherent babble to Summer, but hey, that's why she wasn't a warlock she guessed. Serpent noticed Summer staring and looked back at her friend.
"Did you want me to…?" Serpent inclined her head at the pad.
Summer smirked beneath her helmet, realized it couldn't be seen, and nodded. "It's why we're here."
Serpent returned the nod and launched into an explanation. "From what the data reads so far, most of the stuff here," She gestured to the room they were in, "is spare equipment. The door we came through was likely some emergency or maintenance exit. Still can't tell as to why the Vex conversion of Mercury hasn't affected it, however, but that's unimportant right now. What is important is what this equipment is used for."
"And that is? Side note; is any of it volatile?" Ikaldys asked, grabbing stuff off of shelves and other storage at random and having Gooseberry put them into her storage.
"Some of it, maybe." Serpent said. "From as far as I can determine, this was either used for a very powerful jump gate or engram research instruments."
"Engram research?" Summer asked.
"Mmhmm. It wasn't the most talked about scientific area from the golden age, but the research was primarily focusing on ways to shove more stuff into an engram or put engrams inside other engrams."
"It'd make sense as to why Rahool wanted us to come here," Kurux said. He picked up a round piece of machinery, absently looked at the bottom of it, and set it back down again. Summer was doing much the same and could see that Ikaldys was as well if not also putting it into her digitized backpack when she was done inspecting hers.
Summer, ignoring Ikaldys' minor kleptomania (and in fact, beginning to follow it), refocused on Serpent. "Okay, and the other option was…?"
"Jump gate. Completely off the charts in terms of power. To give you an idea of scale; we use highly refined versions of it to power out interplanetary FTL drives in ships. They're small enough to fit into the engine."
"So, we're looking for something super tiny?" Summer tilted her head like a puppy. This lasted for seconds before her whole form slumped. "Ugh. This is going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack."
Serpent chuckled at the naivety. "Not quite. This thing seems to be taking up…" She glanced at her pad and scrolled down. And down…
And down.
"Forty subterranean floors. And that's only its height."
The entire room went silent. Everybody was staring at Serpent.
"Well, I did say it was quite powerful." Was the only defence she gave.
"You also said that it could have also been engram research." Zac pointed out from Summer's 'backpack'.
"And now I'm saying it's definitely the jump gate. Get over it." Serpent leaned forward, one hand on her hip as she waved the pad dismissively in Summer's direction, intending the motion for Zac.
"Is a jump gate anything like a Vex transfer gate?" Ikaldys inquired.
"It's actually based on it." Serpent answered. "Golden Age scientists ripped off the design and added their own... 'flair' to it."
"Okay. But… well not point out the obvious, but that thing's bigger than any Vex gate I've ever heard of. Even the ones belonging to a Gatelord or the broken ones that are supposed to lead to the Black Garden."
Summer had to agree with that. They had fought a Vex Gatelord back in their early days when the Awoken queen Mara Sov and her prick brother asked them to bring a head of one. Summer refocused back on Serpent when the exo continued to explain.
"Bigger, and more powerful to boot. This thing, from preliminary examination, punches clean out of Sol. To where? I have no idea, any data on it is incredibly corrupted. It actually looks somewhat… intentional. Ikaldys, I'm going to send you some incomplete access keys, mind if you work on them while we go?"
Summer heard a bleep come from Ikaldys' wrist computer, the little eliksni raising their arm to inspect it. Nodding, she was already tapping away at the keypad.
"Should have this done by the time we reach the gate thingy." Ikaldys looked up at Serpent. "You don't want me to activate this thing, do you?" there was a hint of worry in her voice.
"I mean..."
"Seprent!" Kurux cut in. He strode over and rapped his knuckles softly on Serpent's helm. "No! We aren't activating mysterious big portals just to satisfy your curiosity."
"Then what's even the point of one then?" Serpent shrugged slyly. "We should activate it, right Sum? You're all for this stuff."
Summer cupped her chin in thought. She was all for this kind of thing. Big portal that contained untold amounts of adventure? Yes please! But on the other hand, all the forces of darkness were bearing down and fighting like dogs over scraps to try and get this thing. Something told Summer that they knew something she and her friends clearly didn't. BUT! She was all about this stuff...
Summer didn't realize she was leaning in one direction so far in thought, she only realized when she almost fell over, having to right herself to spare any embarrassment. Once Summer was stable on her feet again, she made an executive decision.
"We're not opening it."
"Aw, boo."
"This isn't for us to decide." Summer decided. Childish though she was at times, Summer knew when to play it seriously. And this was serious business. "It'll be up to the Vanguard to decide what'll happen. How are we on that line, by the way?"
"Don't know. Wouldn't matter anyway." Zac's voice echoed in Summer's helmet. "The jamming machinery in this place is still operational and operating very well, at that. I guess I could see why Braytech would want privacy for a place like this."
Gooseberry had something to add, but since it was still in bad French, nobody understood him. "Les schémas disent qu'il y a une porte de toit dans la salle d'embarquement. Si nous l'ouvrons, nous pouvons envoyer un signal."
Everyone turned to look at Ikaldys for an explanation. Ikaldys had already brought up a translator to decipher what Gooseberry had spouted.
"Could you repeat that Goose?"
"La porte. Porte de toit. Pas de brouillage." Gooseberry said again, but slower and more concise. Some tapping at the keyboard on her wrist later and Ikaldys understood the general gist of what Gooseberry was trying to tell them.
"Oh! Goosy is saying there's a roof door in the portal room!"
"...which we could get a signal through!" Serpent deduced.
There was a snapping sound, and the three girls promptly swung their weapons up to point at the source. Which apparently turned out to be Kurux, misjudging his own strength and breaking a piece of equipment. Kurux looked at them like a deer caught in headlights.
"I'm... going to stop touching things."
Ever the responsible one.
2 TAKE 2
A short stint of navigation through the almost maze-like structure of the Braytech compound, and Summer, flanked by Ikaldys and Kurux (Serpent was lagging behind, still looking at data), had entered the room – scratch that – CAVERN that housed the Bray-made gate. It stood atop a ziggurat made of a glassy black stone, so dark it was almost as if it were swallowing the measly illumination that the remaining operational spotlights provided. The gate itself was two towering pillars, bent like they were two halves of a circle except the bottom intersected with the ziggurat and the tops ended in sharp points. Wiring, panels and an overall scrappy appearance run up and down the two pillars, implying that it still wasn't refined when the time came to abandon the compound.
Summer, Kurux, Ikaldys and eventually Serpent when she looked up, got a good look at the machine as they rode a service elevator down, the vertical transport having no walls to obscure their view of the gate.
"That is nothing like a Vex gate." Kurux voiced everyone's thoughts.
"No shit Sherlock..." Serpent remarked instinctually.
The elevator came to the bottom level with a jolt, stopping to let everyone off. The first thing Summer noticed now they were at the base of the machine, was the floor. The same glass-like stone was spattered across the floor, growing in density the closer to the gate. It was almost as if the stone was growing like a plant, infecting the foundation around it and transmuting it. But Summer wasn't the only one to notice this either, as Serpent was already bent over and taking samples of the unknown material. Ikaldys, on the other hand, had already run ahead of the other three and was inspecting the machine's base itself.
This was primarily brought to the attention of everyone else when the screech of grinding metal appeared due to Ikaldys ripping off a service panel on the gate.
"Ikaldys!" Kurux reprimanded. He immediately began to jog up to the little eliksni in a vain attempt to curtail her destructive curiosity. Ikaldys had once taken apart an entire hanger door to know how the wiring worked.
Nobody could use their ships from there for two days afterwards.
Summer just kept walking steadily towards the gate. There was something about it that drew her in. Perhaps it was the mysterious ziggurat base, or maybe the menacing pillars that loomed forebodingly. Summer wasn't sure, but it was something that was drawing her attention into a tunnel-visioned state. Even the bickering between Ikaldys and Kurux faded as Summer scrutinized the structure.
But the voices did fade back into Summer's hearing when the renting sound of machines kicked up. Literally, up. It seemed that Kurux had gotten Ikaldys to open the sky door. It was one of those circular doors, where curved triangles sat on an axis and moved to make the circle in the centre bigger or smaller as the panels moved. Right now, they were retracting to open the circle to its fullest extent, allowing not only a clear signal through, but also the remotely piloted The Glittering Bandit, which cleanly dropped through the entrance and hovered above the fireteam.
"Got the signal, 'Kaldy?" Summer asked.
"Yep! Opening the line now!"
A brief crackle of static was the only pause before the voice of Warlock Vanguard Ikora Rey began speaking.
"-umbler. Fireteam Rumbler, do you hear me?"
"Loud and clear, Ikora."
A sigh of relief came in return. "Guardian Rose. Good to hear from you. We were having trouble contacting you since Master Rahool left the line empty." A noticeable amount of annoyance was on Ikora's voice.
"We went into the Braytech site. There was some radio interference built into the complex. We cracked open a door to get a signal through.
"Good to hear, now update me on the situation."
Summer ran Ikora through their entire trip since they landed on Mercury, and only omitted the specifics of their plateau climb. Ikora diligently listened and assessed the data sent by Serpent and Ikaldys.
"Well, I won't lie and say I expected you to do something more rash and impulsive, Summer. Like opening the gate just to see where it went."
"Hey!"
"But." Ikora immediately returned to speaking, "You made the right decisions. I've already sent for additional fireteams to be dispatched; hold position until they've arrived."
Summer grumbled, still not happy at basically getting called immature. "Rodger th…"
"Ship incoming!"
Summer stopped dead in her affirmation and spun around when Ikaldys screamed those two simple words to everyone. And true enough, a hulking carrier was moving over the hole. Its movement only arrested once it was not only fully covering the opening, but also when a floor hanger was positioned neatly inside it too. The orange shields, which were a dead Cabal giveaway, flickered off and the hulking soldiers began to descend in a controlled manner via jumpjets.
"Oh because of-fucking-course." Serpent said. She drew her Outbreak Prime and spared no time shooting at the descending warmongers.
"Ikora! Ikora we just got jumped by the Cabal! They've blocked the sky door we intended for extraction!" Summer immediately relayed.
"Can you get out the way you came in, Summer?"
Summer looked around to check their remaining option, only for her heart to sink into her stomach when a monochromatic portal opened, depositing equally coloured schemed Taken troops. And it wasn't just one, either. More and more taken portals began popping up and depositing the late Oryx's troops directly into the facility.
"Nnnnnnope! Taken!"
Summer could hear the soft curse that Ikora made.
"Just… Just hold out until backup gets there. I'm hastening the fireteams."
"I don't think we'll be able to do that, Ikora!" Zac said. "All these Taken are saturating the area in darkness! And the Vex landscape certainly isn't helping!"
The sound of a fist slamming against a desk could be heard through the comms. There was also some scuffling and multiple distant voices before Ikora fully returned to the line.
"Okay… Okay. Fireteam Rumbler! You have permission to engage the gate to exfiltrate!"
"What!?" "HELL YEE~ASS!"
"You are some of our best Guardians, we can't lose you. And from the data that Guardian Serpent-11 sent, the device is DNA locked, so it'll fry anything that isn't human."
"Uhhhhhh, Ikora? I'm not human." Ikaldys said. She was also raising her hand despite the fact that Ikora could neither see her nor even there.
"The Taken can't follow you through, so it should be safe to perform a revive once through."
Ikaldys slumped. "That's cold. That's real cold, Ikora. Calling in GB."
With a flourish of the wrist computer, Ikaldys called down The Glittering Bandit. With its tail hovering overhead, cables dropped down from the troop racks that were left in from the ship's time as a Fallen Skiff. Summer attached the line that was closest to her and looked to see if her friends were finished doing the same. Once they were, Ikaldys reeled them back up into the jumpship, where she immediately detached her cord and made a skittering dash to the cockpit where she began tapping at screens and controls with all four of her arms.
"Everyone better strap in! This is going to be a bumpy ride!"
And Ikaldys was not wrong. Despite the shields, armour plating, and the tiny Eliksni's expertise in piloting, the jumpship was still getting absolutely hammered by artillery fire. It didn't help the nerves of Summer, Kurux and Serpent that there was no windshield to see what was happening. Ikaldys fed all the external sensor feeds directly to her helmet's HUD, for 'better piloting' she had explained.
"Ikaldys!"
"Don't worry, it's almost ready!"
Everyone braced as another explosion hit.
"IKALDYS!"
"Almost done! I'd like to see you fly a jumpship and activate an ancient wormhole device!"
No amount of bracing prepared them as Ikaldys barrel-rolled the ship.
"IKALDYS!" The team yelled at her.
"Fine! There! Done! Now can you all-"
And then darkness.