Unrepentant
Jaxson toiled. He fought with all his strength. They managed to hold for a time - longer than he'd hoped for. Each warrior put everything they had into it, their strength, their spirit. It was their lives on the line- no. It was everyone's lives on the line. And none of them were of a mind to fail.
But to keep the hordes of the Typhon at bay forever was a fool's undertaking, and they weren't to match for what lay on the other side. The door shrieked open far enough for something to fly through - the head of a ruinous scythe, wickedly shaped so far as to evoke terror from sight alone. It was larger than Jaxson would've cared for. The wielder must have been massive. He wasn't eager to meet them.
With the scythe braced against the frame it was easier for the hidden beast to slowly lever the door open - just enough for a few lesser monstrosities to squeeze on through. A maggotman tripped over the scythe-head and simply reconfigured themself back to an upright stance, their entire body wriggling like ten thousand independent fingers. Val Ushotan fired on the creature, blasting it apart with his shotgun. A second followed it through, similarly fated, but its death covered the third's approach and allowed them to close in. Jaxson funnelled the Arc under his legs and allowed it to give him thrust, momentarily pushing away from the door only to smash in against the maggotman with a sun-bright hammer. It died on the spot, obliterated.
"Glorious!" Ushotan chuffed.
Jaxson just exhaled and braced against the door again. His hammer made for a better deterrent than any firearm, easy to swing and unnecessary to reload. The next couple of maggotmen shared the same gruesome fate, and the rest came to the slow realization of what was happening because they refused to follow in their compatriots' steps. That suited him just fine. Whatever extra couple of seconds they could buy were worth it.
"Hurry up!" Jaxson yelled. "We're losing ground!"
"Just a little longer!" Osiris called back. "We almost have it!"
The weight of the door became unbearably heavy. Jaxson's strength was leaving him. One of the Eliksni all but collapsed and the injured Captain took their place, their wounded arm all but forgotten. Adrenaline was the making of higher life, someone had once told him, and the cure to every quandary. The symptom of fear was the inevitable convergent evolution, linking every people across the stars under a single unified banner: survive. Sometimes it was all they needed.
This was something the Black Fleet didn't understand.
"La'azazél!" Osiris swore. Jaxson resisted the urge to look around; the door was giving, slowly but steadily, and it screamed as it dragged across the obsidian floor. Colossal fingers wrapped around the edge of the frame, long and slender and wrapped in hard red flesh. Patterns were inscribed upon them - the creature's whole hand was a canvas given over to ritual scarring. "Wolf!"
"WHAT?!"
"We have them."
Jaxson chanced a glance behind him - and it was in that split second that the door broke its fittings. As it threatened to collapse atop them Jaxson gave one final shove and send it back. There was a crash, and a shuffle, and then the door fell the rest of the way, eliciting cries of echoing fright from a couple of maggotmen. The way lay open. In the shadows beyond Jaxson caught a glimpse of something terrible, something unnatural, something... something not meant to be glimpsed by mere mortals. A radial ring of mismatched eyes fixed upon him from a chimeric mass of flesh, crowning the dark-skull head of a creature whose like he'd never encountered before. It had too many limbs to count, but the dominant pair were long and lanky and clutched a wicked scythe of gold and silver. The blade hummed, edged with ethereal pink fangs. It stood three times as tall as the largest Centurion, if not more; most of its form was still veiled in darkness while crimson smog gathered over its back like a Hunter's cloak. Veins of red lightning flashed through the smoke every second to the wardrum beat of alien hearts.
It was the Terror from the throne. The thing he knew to be Fear Itself.
"Fuck."
The unholy horror cackled with sick laughter and it stalked over the fallen door, two dozen claws tip-tapping against the blackstone. No one moved. Its very visage was enough to stall them in place.
It shifted- no. No, Jaxson's idea of the creature shifted; the edge of vision rippled where it met with his Light. The Voidwalker techniques, so painstakingly learned, warred with the flood of hallucinatory stimuli. He saw...
Them.
Everyone he'd ever loved. Most of them gone. The rest... soon to be. His heart raced and his fury died. His world grew dim, drowned in Nightmare. There was nothing left for him to fight for. No reason to keep going, keep breathing. They'd lost years ago. He just hadn't realized it-
No. No. This was wrong, this was all so wrong, they would have wanted him to-
"She died needlessly," the Thing whispered into his ears. "And he left you to your fate, chasing his own destined end. You are going to die here, Ler'rux. Alone. Your kith are gone. It's time you joined them."
Join them. Lennox-2. Hunter. Ikharos Torstil. Warlock. They'd dragged him out of hell - and right back into it. With love. Always with love. Even against his wishes. This was his home, their home. They were the living dead and hell was their playground. It consumed them, broke them, destroyed them again and again over and over - and snatched them away just when he'd needed them most.
Now it was his turn.
Now-
"Ike isn't dead," Jaxson croaked. The Nightmare faded. "He just fucked off." Of the rest the less said the better. The Thing shuddered and flexed, withdrawing back into its own impossible self. An avatar of sweet delirium, yearning agony - a scrimshaw idea of a god, filed down into material scope.
"He follows in the steps of old night," the Thing whispered. "His voice is silenced; his claw will never lay upon our flesh again. The universe has already discarded his shape. You will never find him. This is the small death: sliding into obscurity. This is the terror of immortals: the grand cut-off point. This is my name: that which stalks. I hunt, I feed. Forget me not."
The words pounded in his ears with each pounding beat - a thunderous roar of ill-begotten existences. The air stank of corpses and the maggotmen approached, sheltered beneath the ragged red wing of the shapeless Thing.
"Nezarec," Jaxson gasped. His throat was slick with blood. His very biology was coming apart at the seams, scraped raw by the lustrous aura of true divinity. Someone was trying to fit him into their fantasy like a poorly-shaped puzzle piece. He was changing, but his Light resisted. It was all that it could do to keep him alive. "That's you. You're Nezarec."
The Thing proudly splayed its dripping red form, hooded like a cobra. The dancing ring of eyes flashed with terrible jubilance. "Wyrm-eater, Hope-stealer, Conflux-bane - reckless child of that eleventh way, hate and hurt and dread-owed malice. Your end has come. Give in."
"No."
The maggotmen surged forth. Jaxson met them with a crackling fist, Arc energy bursting forth from his knuckles to annihilate a swathe of them. The rest followed without fear and took the ensuing gunfire with detached indifference; Jason's companions broke from their terrible reverie and took to battle with instinctual desperation. Where their Arc rounds met with maggot-flesh Jaxson laid his Light and body down as a living barricade, an unbreakable wall - and he dug his heels in as the Thing brought its might to bear.
It shrugged off the shroud of Nightmare and bared itself in all its macabre glory - a skinless, mouthless creature atop a serpent's scaled body, wet webbing stretched taught between ivory spines. Its skull was dark and dual-crested, traumatically misshapen. In its twenty-fingered hands it weighed its scythe for the hewing of souls. Nezarec, Manifest in Flesh, pointed His weapon at Jaxson. It seemed as if the world had condensed into a single point - the Dread Thing's ruinous gaze.
"Then suffer."
He struck fast - a living blur, scythe arcing towards Jaxson's neck. Jaxson caught the blow on a shield of shimmering Void and he answered with flame, bringing to bear a solar storm in the shape of a maul. Light and Dark smashed together and the very architecture of the room began to crack.
"Wolf!" Osiris shouted. "Wolf!"
Jaxson swatted the scythe aside and enveloped Nezarec in a cyclone of pyroclastic fury. Welt-red muscle seared and cracked, but the God-Thing clicked His fingers and the killing Light guttered out. The scythe struck in again, wreathed in those same flames renewed, and Jaxson's shield split apart. He staggered back, arm a mangled mess, and fell to a shaking knee.
"I am the pain, your God," Nezarec growled, "and I suffer no contenders." He lifted His scythe-
-and caught a face full of lightning for His efforts. Jaxson ducked as a flood of power unleashed from somewhere behind him. Nezarec stumbled back and braced the head of his weapon against the Arc flare, a diaphanous shield of smoky pink growing from the weapon's head. Jaxson lunged forward to make it past the lip of the barrier and struck out - not with Light or Dark but a spear of hijacked datalattice. Pale Vex architecture ran like a lance from the blades of his Splicer gauntlet, pinning Nezarec through His distorted sternum.
Nezarec glanced down at the offending acausal manifestation and chuckled wetly. "Good," He purred, and groaned as His flesh began to warp with Vex infection. Nodes struck out from His leathery hide, radiolaria bled thick from His wounds, and peerless brass began to overtake His chimeric anatomy. The infestation spread in an instant - and stopped short of His chin. His laughter choked away as it cut and cut and cut until His skull fell loose, hitting the floor with a heavy thump. In the place of his disintegrating torso emerged a bronze Hydra, sharpened ribs sliding into place along its sinuous spine. Heavy siege cannons sprouted on either end of its wide skull and a dozen red optics flickered online, scanning the entire chamber without exemption. A slow cutting warble rumbled out from deep within its newborn hull.
It looked upon them all with a machine's baleful disregard - and to Jaxson's good fortune it turned its weapons upon the maggotmen instead of himself or his cohorts. Antimatter mortars discharged immediately, snuffing alien lives from the fabric of history itself. It was angry, the Hydra. Angry enough to step in a god's domain. Flashes of pale lightning consolidated around it, birthing instances of additional Vex platforms: Goblins, Harpies, Minotaurs. They closed around the Mind, around Nezarec's disembodied skull, and began their invasion with mechanical efficiency.
Jaxson staggered back, already spent. A coil of Arc wrapped around his torso, gentle like, and dragged him back into the safety of his pack, his party, his force of trained killers from near and far - though half of them greeted him dead. Osiris, Irxan, another of the Captains and a single Centurion were all that remained, and they cut haggard figures themselves, complete with caustic burns and bleeding eyes.
Osiris's bracers glowed with electricity, makeshift circuitry smoking as it tried to contain the scope of the Arkborn. He panted with exertion, with pain. "We must le-" His words split with a cry and he all but collapsed on the spot. Jaxson caught him - and oh, oh the power, oh the Arc, it ran against his Light and he could feel the life within. They were inquisitive, terrified; they were creatures of chaotic violence and they flailed blindly, aching to be loose.
"I've gotcha," Jaxson told him, but he was already gone. "Ghost?"
"He's alive," Ghost assured him. "Stable from what I can tell, but he won't stay that way for long."
"Fuck. Irxan? We need an exit."
Irxan slowly nodded. One of their arms was broken. Their shrapnel launcher was slagged to hell and back by maggot-touch, but their gauntlet remained intact. Their blades engaged, spinning to catch wisps of Vex code. "Too much," they whispered. "Too much."
"Can we manage a portal?"
"Yes, but..." Irxan trailed off.
"Can we make it to the Garden or not?"
"Nama. We would fight against the tide, Lightbearer. We would not win." They hesitated. "The floodgates are open. You opened them."
"Just to keep these fuckers busy. Disregard the Garden; is there any-" Jaxson laid Osiris down and activated his own gauntlet.
- door anchor hold point crack breach insert simulate annihilate-
The weight of the Vex crashed over him. Irxan's reservations became a certainty. Legions marched, great Minds roused from hibernation across infinite points in time, entire solar systems were being emptied of power and resources to converge on this singular point in space. The Network was declaring war - on the Black Fleet itself. The newly-formed Conflux was running one way and one way only: inside. Millions more constructs were waiting to translate while memetic bodies and assimilation vectors clotted the access lanes. Jaxson hadn't ever known them to be so riled. Not even at the entrance to the Garden itself. It was too much. It didn't make any sense. He'd opened the gates but the gates weren't supposed to be so big. Neptune was wrapped in new history-
They had an installation close by. That was the only explanation he could think of. An installation the Typhon Imperator was fast closing in on. If the Vex were moving troops away from it... It was a bad idea. Jaxson knew it. But if he had to pick a Vex station or the thing Calus had become - it was no contest.
"Follow me," he said, and ripped the Network open. A couple of constructs noticed. Some of them twisted around and opened fire. Irxan caught their projectiles and froze them with a flick of their hand.
"Foolish," they said, but they stepped through the rupture first. Jaxson ushered in the rest and gathered Osiris up. His last image of the room was the Hydra swivelling about with its armaments locking on - and Nezarec's skull lying forgotten on the floor beneath it, slick red vascular strands growing out of the neck stump. Not dead, but equally not his problem anymore.
Then the Network took him, them, and his world became raw information. They danced from synapse to synapse, leaping between geometric structures of pure Vex pattern - until it gave way to a ring, a fortification surrounding a damp blindspot already overgrown with stray Egregore. Spores clogged Jaxson's filters, found their way into his lungs until he lost his focus and they were tumbling, tumbling, tumbling...
And physical once more. His back hit stone; Jaxson rebounded off of it, gasped as the ground disappeared beneath him - sparkling black rock giving way to a near-vertical cliff-face. Clouds gathered below, deceptively fluffy. He spotted the Centurion and Irxan helping the other Captain back up from the edge, and he gathered the Light beneath him, rocketing himself towards their position. Jaxson's Lift gave up just short of the lip - but Irxan sprang for him with dazzling speed, catching his wrist in their claws. His arm twinged, all but torn from its socket; he bit his tongue as they pulled him up until all he could taste was blood. Jaxson handed Osiris off before vaulting up over the edge himself, falling onto his back and heaving for fresh air.
Someone chuckled breathily. The Centurion. The other Captain joined in - a sharp clicking sound that wouldn't have been remiss in a pre-Golden Age horror movie. There was no real joy in it, not really, but it caught hold in Jaxson's chest until he'd added his own voice to the chorus. It was the relief, he supposed. The disbelief that they were still alive.
He stopped damned quick when Osiris started to scream.
Jaxson leapt to his feet, wrenched his arm back into place and knelt down beside him. Irxan was already there on Osiris's other side. They tried to touch his arm but the Arc coursing through his body snapped at the air in warning. They spared Jaxson a look.
"Ghost," he said.
Ghost manifested over them. "I-I don't know. The Arkborn - get them off him! Jaxie, take them off!"
Jaxson grabbed the closest Sunbracer and bit down hard as the Arkborn lashed at him, filling his body with a thousand volts. Enough to turn a mortal man into soup. He worked at the clasps locking the bracers in place until he had it worked free - only to find he couldn't relax his fingers to toss them away. His Light rose within him with the taste of bile and burn and he yelled through it, matching the Arkborn Arc for Arc: PLEASE!
They stopped. The second Sunbracer he found similarly subdued. Jaxson shoved them on the far side of the alcove and collapsed beside Osiris face up.
"Lightbearer," Irxan rasped, rebreather working on overdrive. The atmosphere was thick and inhospitable, but the distinct lack of crushing pressure and suffocating ammonia was a miracle in and of itself - that and the lack of Vex matter. The sky above was blanketed with clouds. Gales whipped overhead, scraping against the rock, but their alcove offered a modicum of protection.
This couldn't have been Neptune.
The clouds broke. Miles on miles above them something huge fell through: the Typhon Imperator, prow aimed forth like a spear. Jaxson pointed at it. Irxan glanced up and swore in their own language. "Psekisk."
Psekisk, psekisk, psekisk, that beautiful word. Where had he heard it before?
"Psekisk," Jaxson agreed, moments before the thunderous din hit them. The Imperator roared, groaning, as it collapsed beneath its own unwieldy weight, driving down with cataclysmic force - and narrowly missing their conspicuous cliff. Vex webbing surrounded the ship, needling it with radiolarian wires. The warship sank beyond the scope of his sight. And stopped. The cliff trembled and it was only by Irxan's quick reflexes that Jaxson wasn't outright thrown off. The Imperator had struck solid ground.
Ground. On Neptune.
The warship's gargantuan body loomed above, coming closer. And closer. And-
"Fuck sake," Jaxson gasped. He snatched up the Arkborn while Irxan grabbed Osiris, and they all leapt away - taking to the cliff face with Light, jump-jets and claws. The Imperator closed in quickly until it shadowed everything. Jaxson tossed a Duskfield to slow it down but the effect was minimal. The ship hit the cliff hard, cracking it down the middle, and the resulting quake tossed them into open air. Jaxson dove after Irxan while the Centurion went for the Captain and he caught the Splicer about the waist, slowing their descent with a spluttering Lift. The clouds below rushed up to meet them, fast, while the cliff face fell after them in the shape of shattered debris.
Irxan tightened their hold and Jaxson's world shifted again, flashing with the blue of a short-ranged Arc Blink. His feet hit solid ground and he lost his grip, sprawling across hard rock. A boulder smashed down nearby and showered him in splinters. Jaxson lurched back to his feet, caught up with Irxan and the pair of them belted onwards as fast as they could manage. The ensuing avalanche resounded behind them with an almighty crash.
When the dust cleared they were the only ones left. The Imperator lay at a harsh angle, halfway embedded in the ground with its tail propped up along the lip of a rocky plateau. Vex structures began to solidify around it as the Network superimposed itself in the history of the local geology. It was a second installation in the making.
"Where are we?" Jaxson gasped.
"I don't know," Ghost admitted. "But... I'm detecting power fluctuations south- no, east of our position. Southeast. I think."
"Vex?"
"Hell if I know."
"We can hijack another portal," Jaxson decided. "Get a message up top, see if we can ferry Caiatl's people down."
"If we must."
"No choice. Need reinforcements. Can't take on Calus's people alone."
"And the god, Lightbearer?" Irxan pressed. "The living agony?"
"Nezarec? I don't..." Jaxson heaved a shaking sigh. "He's probably dead."
"Godflesh is expendable."
"I don't think He was Ascendant. He wasn't Hive enough."
"But if He lives..."
"Then it's all the more reason to get our people down here." Jaxson readied his gauntlet. Irxan mirrored the motion and together they wove a Vex terminal into realspace. Datalattice roots pierced the rock at their feet, crackling with stolen power, and brassy capsules bulged like terrible fruit from fractal branches.
-a growth a seed a beginning a bushel a budding purpose-
The Network ran like a torrential river through local subspace and it was all they could do to diverge just a little, to keep it small and unnoticeable - a teensy little mountain stream, clear and full of goody little minerals. Vex-life was at a minimum; Jaxson left it to Irxan to keep enough firewalls aloft to ensure that remained the case. He took what few little microbes of living Vex radiolaria found themselves cut off and he froze them with willpower in the shape of dark crystal - the death of entropy and the singular weakness of all Vex kind. They were clever little things, the Vex, even at such a size. Their entire function was to carry immense loads of information across all of time and space. Was it so much to ask, then, that he could engineer them into ferrying his own findings up to the Cabal fleet? Another Splicer would notice, pick it up - but any farther than that and the Vex would doubtless realize they'd been had.
"Lighbearer," Irxan urgently whispered.
"I'm almost finished."
"Lightbearer. Look."
Jaxson frowned and left his work, joining Irxan at the firewalls. The Gauntlet's interface shifted, gracing his retinas with another display - a vast sea of perfect harmony. The Network. Veins of intent pulsed with fury, rising up like a tidal wave again and again to beat at a vast wicked blindspot lodged in its cold flesh: the Typhon Imperator. But the warship hadn't simply sunk blind; it lay embedded in the impossible rock next to what appeared to be a colossal fish tank. The Network surrounded it, enveloped it, subsumed everything beyond it but stopped abruptly just short of its borders. No, not a fish tank - a snow globe, full of a million dazzling little lights. It wasn't Vex inside, but it was powerful tech all the same, and through ports in the dome's base it siphoned power from the Network directly. A parasite, a tick in the Network's side, an entire colony founded in sheer spite of the Vex Pattern. By why hadn't the Vex-
Then he saw it. Through the rock, beneath the surface of the Vex sea lay a second dome wrapped in dark roots and framed beneath the hollowed hull of the largest Hydra Jaxson had ever seen - a construct half Precursor and half Descendant, like a chimeric merging of future and past. Its skeletal ribs were erected like pillars around the under-dome, jutting upwards to form sharpened spires. Its dead optics, thousands of them, stared longingly through the stone to Neptune's teal skies. Spectral webbing hung between the brass spires, every silken length inscribed with runes. Ascendant runes.
Hive. Wriggling like maggots in the Hydra's carcass. But the under-dome lay dark and even the faint glimmer of Hive biotechnology was conspicuously absent. Jaxson sent a reckless query through the Network, framing it as a far-flung Mind's curious probe. The Network hardly shifted; it was all hands on deck and it answered him on automatic, Harpies of a dozen separate subtypes escorting the answer to him. Jaxson caught them, froze them solid and flayed the Network's knowledge from their datacores. Irxan patched up after him, making them believe their time spent in suspended animation to be a glitch - an unfortunate side effect of the Imperator's proximity. They returned to the Network none the wiser.
"What is it?" Irxan questioned lowly. "What is this place?"
Jaxson peeled the conscious Vex ideas apart, drawing them between his Gauntlet's blades until they surrendered their findings. "It's..." he breathed in sharply. "It's a grave."
"A grave?"
"A whole cemetery. There's... there's millions of Vex corpses." Jaxson glanced downwards. "This rock... everything here's Vex matter, shorn down into stone. Traveler above..."
"But what is that?" Irxan indicated to the under-dome.
"That's a barrow. I... I don't know any more than that. The Vex aren't feelin' chatty." Jaxson blinked. "They're protecting this place."
"What does that mean?"
"It means..." Jaxson's expression fell. "Fuck. The Veil. They're here for the Veil too."
"The Veil?" Irxan pressed.
"An artefact linked to the Traveler. That's all I know."
"A fragment of the Great Machine?" Irxan's eyes lit up with hope.
"I have no fucking idea, alright? Rasputin said it was here. Nefele Stronghold. I just... didn't think it would be the Vex." He looked back at the over-dome. "That part's still active. There's something happening in there."
"Caluskel's Ketch is close by," Irxan said. "We may are too late."
"Not yet we aren't. They missed it. They're outside its borders. We did some good." Jaxson flicked with his Gauntlet, then drew and reloaded his Xenophage. "Message is sent, but there's no way the Network's gonna let us translate reinforcements down here. It'd be a bloodbath. We need something stronger - something more direct. A central Conflux, maybe."
"Vex will guard it."
"Yeah, but that's where I come in." Jaxson shot Irxan a smile - then remembered he had his helmet on. "Because I'm... yeah."
"Eia," Irxan said drily. "I know what you are."
"... Cool." Jaxson breathed in deep. "Alright, 'kay. Still have to figure out what Calus is planning next. Entire Network's on His golden ass. They won't let Him set one foot outside."
"There are no Vex within the barrow."
"Ain't that a bitch. Ghost? How're we looking for Sparrow access?"
"Uh..." Ghost trailed off. "We're in luck, just... I think there's a transmat-jammer ahead. I won't be able to supply you the second we enter its range."
"I'm decent for ammo. Splicer?"
"I have five batteries left."
"Ghost, link up, send them some glim-"
"Her," Irxan corrected him.
"... Right." Jaxson paused and inclined his head. "If she needs anything, synthesize her some from our glimmer."
"Already on it. How many batteries can you carry?"
"Is that you who speaks, little machine?"Irxan's optics flickered. "Another... what is the word, dozen? Eleven and one?"
"That's it," Jaxson told her.
"Eia, dozen."
"Synthesizing now."
"I'll get you to a Conflux," Jaxson informed her. "Alive and well, I promise. We open a gate to orbit for Caiatl to bring her army down and for you and Osiris to get out. We good with that?"
Irxan's inner pair of eyes narrowed. "But not yourself?"
"I can't stop here. Calus is still breathing. If He finds the Veil..."
"What will happen if the Fleet takes the Veil?"
"Above your paygrade."
She straightened up, horned head shadowing over him. "I am not here for monetary gain."
"Join the club."
"Are you so eager to be rid of us?"
Jaxson nodded. "We've lost everyone else getting here. I'm not optimistic about our chances."
"A risk we accepted."
"You shouldn't be here. He definitely shouldn't be." Jaxson grimaced. "Saint's going to fucking annihilate me."
"I am here, Lightbearer, to fight," Irxan reminded him. "As is the Phoenix."
"Well, he should be awake to make that decision, and that's probably not going to happen until we get him into a medbay. Just..." Jaxson heaved a sigh. "Let's see what we can get away with. No point arguing this now."
"We must advance regardless."
"Exactly. Ghost? Sparrow?"
"Transmatting now." A glitter of blue light flashed in front of them, depositing a partially-deconstructed Interceptor - all frame and no plate.
Jaxson slapped the back of the saddle. "Let's get him up." Together he and Irxan managed to settle Osiris onto the war machine. Jaxson sat up in front and Irxan perched up over them, claws closed around railings and framework. Snug fit. Should have been an advertisement to young Guardians on how not to operate hoverbikes because Jaxson almost ran them into a rut the moment he pressed down on the thrusters - too much weight, too unevenly distributed. That it even hovered in the first place was a miracle - Interceptors were built for boneless Psions alone.
They flew across the stony flats without much more hassle, though, and closed in on the Vex parasite. It wasn't long before a massive shimmering field of energy rose from the horizon, breaking through the blanket of clouds. The prow of the Imperator was lodged within like an arrowhead, bleeding sparkling air into Neptune's impossible atmosphere. Crimson mists coalesced about the warship, scratching at the containment field incessantly. Nightmares and worse.
"Ghost," Jaxson said. "What are we looking at?"
"I think... I think it's an ecological feedback-field, with a stabilization ring at its base - like the Dreaming City. But it's bigger. Much bigger. And unless it's built on a crossroads for the Leylines... This is where the power taken from the Network is going. It must be plugged into that Hydra's ribs. Must be."
"Dangerous."
"Unimaginably."
"Any idea who built it?"
"It's obvious, isn't it?"
Jaxson frowned. "Is it?"
"Humans," Irxan whispered into his ear. "This is a human installation. The architecture is yours."
"Like hell it is."
"No other people builds machines from the Vex. Eliksni dabble but their components are cursed. Only humans foolishly cross that line."
"That's a Hive mausoleum underneath."
Irxan snorted. "Bones, bedrock. Your people are adept at building atop the accomplishments of others."
"Lil' barbed, but alright." Jaxson contemplated it. "If this is human, then... then it's been here since the Collapse."
"Along with those inside," Ghost murmured.
"You think there's survivors?"
"I don't… I don't know."
"Guess we'll find out."
Jaxson dragged the Interceptor to a stop as they closed on a massive silver wall bristling with Arc-coated foils. The very air crackled with the incredible power at work. His own Light surged in kind - and the Sunbracers followed suit, somehow sensing kindred energy-forms.
"They're harnessing the local storms," Ghost surmised. "It's pushing back against the magnetic forces - and the Network. This is definitely human handiwork."
"But how do we get in?"
"Looking... Airlock. South along the wall."
"Airlock..." Jaxson echoed. "Why would they come out here?"
"Gravity's uncannily kind and pressure's nonexistent. No ammonia sea to drown in. Maybe they were researching the Vex?"
"All the samples they could need are inside. That hull's gotta be the biggest Mind there ever was. You could wrap it around the Traveler if you'd wanted."
"Y-... yeah. You could. Hold on..." Ghost trailed off.
"I say something?" Jaxson questioned worriedly.
"Just keep going. I'm just running scans."
"Now's not the time."
"Yeah yea, you focus on reaching that airlock first."
"I see it." Irxan leapt from the Interceptor.
Jaxson skidded to a halt - and the jarring motion elicited a fitful groan from Osiris. "Wolf?"
"Almost there," Jaxson said quickly. He dismounted and pulled Osiris free. "Hold on old man."
Osiris huffed weakly. "I'd cuff your ears-"
"Sure you will." Jaxson pulled Osiris's arm over his shoulder. "Splicer! What's it look like?"
Irxan peeked out from a gap in the foils. "Locked."
"Ghost-"
"On it." Ghost manifested and flew to the airlock console, firing a beam of blue Light from his iris. "Firewalls are intense. I-" He paused. "Oh Traveler."
"Can we get in?"
"Opening now. But, uh..." Ghost decompiled. "I think someone noticed."
"Lightbearer," Irxan murmured. "Cabal march."
Jaxson glanced over his shoulder. There was a dark line on the misted horizon, advancing beneath the shadow of the Imperator. "Dammit."
"Jaxie-"
"No time." Jaxson shoved himself and Osiris in. Irxan squeezed in after them; there wasn't a whole lot of room and even less when the airlock closed shut behind them. The chamber hissed with cleansing agents, scouring them of contaminants before spitting them out on the other side - right into the sightlines of a colossal rifle.
"Shit," Jaxson muttered. He stared down the gun barrel, waiting for the flash that would prescribe him with a nasty case of dead.
"Who," a deep modulated voice warbled, steely with incredulous rage, "the hell are you?" The words were spoken in an English-Kurmanji blend - the chief dialect of Freehold, trans-Jovian space and Jaxson's old fireteam. A dead provincialism, at home with the rest of the Golden age classics.
Jaxson's gaze flicked up. It was a person. A human person. The proportions were all wrong; they were nine feet tall at least, easily Irxan's height, and their body was wrapped in rippling muscle worthy of a Cabal. Cybernetic implants criss-crossed their arms and powerful torso like lesions, and a short shouldercape of woven platinum hung from their back. Their armour was piecemeal, parts of it covering their vitals but otherwise absent - mostly about their waist and midriff but leaving their upper chest open, reinforced ribs bulging beneath their skin. Their right hand was covered in steel and everything below their knees were plated like a soldier's sabatons. A supple sheet of metal wrapped around their scalp, enclosing their crown in peerless silver. Red, blue, green and yellow lights flickered here and there, their purpose unknown. A tabard hung from their waist, inscribed with swirling patterns.
"Easy," Jaxson urged. "Easy with that thing. I've got a wounded Lightless here."
"Lightless-" The stranger's multi-faceted optic-eyes shifted and narrowed. "You're one of them."
"My name is Jaxson Ineta, Titan."
"No. No, you're from Earth."
"I never said I wasn't?"
"Titan."
"Yeah, that's..." Jaxson grimaced. "Right, yeah. Well, we come in peace."
"No you don't." The stranger sneered. "Your kind don't know the meaning of the word."
"He needs medical attention."
"You shouldn't be here, Warlord."
"I'm not a Warlord," Jaxson bit out. "I'm a Guardian. A Guardian."
"Don't care what you call yourself." The stranger tilted their head. "Rohan, I've got another trespasser - Lightbearer. Xenological offensive must be a divers-"
There was a flash of light and then Irxan was in between them, slashing a shock blade through the rifle, teleporting away as the stranger swept the molten remains of their weapon her way. Jaxson let go of Osiris and thundered forth, closing the distance with three bounding leaps and driving his shoulder into the cyber-human's midriff. He'd kept his Light at bay, expecting to feel something give way, but the stranger held firm and backhanded him aside with startling strength.
"Your loss, Warlord," they said with a scowl. A baton bedecked in Arc materialized in their grasp, large enough to be considered a maul for any normal human, and they swung hard. Jaxson ducked, caught the backswing with a Solar hammer and danced away. Irxan teleported on the stranger's opposite side, blades poised and they lurched away - before breaking into a leap and swinging for Irxan's horned head at speeds rivalling an Arcstrider.
She jerked back, surprised, and deflected the next blow just in time. Whoever they were, they were stronger - strong enough to match a Captain enhanced by SIVA. Jaxson moved in after them, dropped a glacial wall between them the moment space presented itself and he cornered the stranger against the Stasis crystals - only for them to rise up into the air on a surfboard pulled from their back. They turned quick, drove down for Jaxson, but he dragged a Sentinel Shield out from the Void and held it steady as the baton struck. Volatile energy burst forth, driving the stranger from the air. The surfboard, now riderless, flew to catch them and they turned for another round, sans a broken baton.
They were a silver blur and came in fast - a feint this time, and Jaxson fell for it hook and sinker. They rounded his shield, smashed into him, and his back was abruptly against the containment wall, a massive hand pinning him there. Without the Light he probably would've died there and then; his bones held and only just, aided by synthoceptic fibres threaded through his breastplate. His assailant pressed him, hand to his neck, and glared with their metal teeth bared.
"Freeze," they growled, eye-implants glowing red. "Not another move, Lightbearer."
"Wait!" Osiris called out. He was braced against the airlock hatch below, so pitifully fragile. Irxan stood in front of him, blades at the ready. "We are not your enemy."
"Peace. With an army at our doorstep."
"Not. Ours," Jaxson hacked. He caught the transhuman's wrist; their grip tightened. Sooner or later his windpipe was going to collapse.
"Lightbearer, I said-"
"Freeze." Stasis burst from Jaxson's fingertips, covering the transhuman from head to toe. They fell - and Jaxson softened their impact with a flush of Solar. The transhuman's crystal coating cracked and they stumbled out of it, still in trans-temporal shock. Jaxson swooped in quickly, gave them a headbutt to remember him for years to come and finished them off with a lightning-coated right hook. The stranger crumpled.
"Wolf," Osiris chided.
Jaxson looked at him. "What?"
"... Nothing." Osiris struggled to right himself. "We cannot waste more time."
"Like... hell," the stranger garbled. Against all odds they rose to a knee, their broken jaw shifting. Something was moving under their skin, resetting bone and cybernetics.
"Stay down," Jaxson firmly told them. "Or I'll put you down."
"Damned-"
"Nimbus!"
Jaxson twirled, flaming maul at the ready, but the newcomer was keeping their distance. It was another transhuman, just as massive and just as heavily cybernetically modified. Their garb was different - more complete, more artificial. One of their hands was completely mechanical. A certain kind of mechanical too; Jaxson knew the look of that frame. He's seen it in timeless installations all across the system - and aboard the Imperator too.
"Oh," Osiris muttered. "Son of a-"
"Lightbearers," the newcomer gruffly intoned from atop their own surfboard. They glanced at Irxan. "And xenoform associate. You shouldn't be here."
"Where is here?" Jaxson asked. He kept his eyes on the first transhuman, holding his shield close.
"This is the city of Neomuna," the old guy said.
The younger shot them a sharp look. "Rohan-"
"Nimbus, enough." The older transhuman, Rohan, jerked his chin to the airlock. "What's this you've dragged here? The Black Fleet?"
Jaxson exchanged a look with Osiris. Osiris cleared his throat. "You know of the Black Fleet?"
"Yes."
"Then must you know why they're here."
Rohan raised an eyebrow. "Do you?"
"The Veil," Osiris whispered softly.
Nimbus muttered something under their breath.
"The Veil," Rohan breathed. He dipped his head and his board lowered to the ground. "Is that why you've come, Lightbearer?"
"We've come to safeguard it."
"You have, have you?" Rohan regarded them bemusedly. "Who are those outside?"
"Shadow Legion," Jaxson explained impatiently. "Cabal loyal to Calus - and through Him, the Witness."
"Cabal? Calus?"
"Alien militants and the former emperor of their domain," Osiris elaborated. "We do not have time for this-"
"How do you know about the Veil?" Rohan pressed. "You should not be here."
"Dreams," Osiris admitted. "Memories."
"Whose?"
"The Witch Queen's."
There was a long pause. "Na'Sathona?" Rohan asked, his voice scarcely a whisper. He stepped from his board. Something moved behind him - a lot of somethings. Frames, war-molded. A dozen of them with rifles raised and optics squared.
"Hey now..." Jaxson warned. "Get those guns out of our faces."
Rohan raised a clenched fist. The Frames paused in their advance. "Lightbearers of Earth," he said. "By the power invested in me by the city council of Neomuna, I, Strider Rohan, am placing you under arrest for trespassing."
"There's an army at your gates," Osiris pointed out. "Now is not the time-"
"They can wait," Rohan huffed. "They have no choice. Neither do you."
Jaxson's frustrations manifested as a Hammer of Sol. Flame and Void wrapped around him, humming and sizzling until his very blood sang in tandem. "Well I ain't playing along."
"You wanna die?" Nimbus snarled. "Happy to oblige."
"You don't know what you're saying, son," Rohan chided. "Put that magic away."
"Wolf," Osiris hissed. "Stand down."
Jaxson exchanged a long look with Irxan. She curiously stared back. "No," he decided. "I'm not surrendering to that."
"Wolf-"
"That's a Vex hand." Jaxson dragged in a deep breath. "They're not even human."
"Jaxson-"
"I've had a long fucking day, alright? I'm not playing with sims who think they're people."
"Too far," Irxan growled in agrement. "Humans go too far, always. Vex cannot be tamed. Cannot be emulated. Cannot be wielded."
Rohan took a step forward - but a circular drone dove down from above. There was a swarm of them overhead. Cameras and sensors and so much more. The first drone landed and projected a hologram of a middle-aged woman, and unlike Rohan and Nimbus both she was of normal stature and build both. She animatedly threw out her arms as if to gather them all up in a big hug. "Hey, none of that! Rohan? Be nice."
Rohan said nothing.
"Been a while since anyone visited," the hologram continued. "Anyone that wasn't a hack-mad time-travelling robot, that is. Gotta excuse the manners; these hunks don't know a friendly tourist when they see one - especially those who want to give a helping hand. That's their job, right, and no one else's. Bit... territorial. Like terriers. Love terriers."
Jaxson frowned. "The fuck are you on about?"
"Right, so, Strider edicts mean Earthlings aren't... eh, nevermind. We got passes! Day-passes. You want a day-pass mister space zombie? We could throw one for your... uh, spider-crab friend?"
"Eliksni," Irxan spat.
The hologram frowned. "Lick you?"
"Nama-"
"I mean... that a custom? 'Fraid that's a no-can-do sweetie. My grandma om always said to keep SIVA at a distance like - like this big." The woman held her hands three feet apart or so. "And honey? You're full of it. Full. Of. It. Nothing personal, just grans rules. Love the horns, though. Is that part of your helmet or your head? Oh complex below you're awesome. Where're you from?"
"What's this about, Quinn?" Rohan tiredly demanded.
"Hm? Oh, yeah, these guys?" 'Quinn' pointed to Jaxson, Irxan and Osiris. "Council's giving them passes. Y'heard that part, right?"
"Passes."
"You're not short-circuiting on me, are you? Day passes. For the Gate and the Wall and... well, that's pretty much it so far. Oh, and the beach. They get to go to the beach because everyone loves the beach. Oh, don't give me that face - it's all under supervision. Strict supervision. Your supervision."
"The law-"
"Pfft, law. Imagine that, a law. This is a state of emergency my guy. Aliens! Again!" Quinn smiled. "Get them to the Gate, get that... feathered guy an ice pack for his booboos and put them on a holocall so we can talk about these... Wolf dude, what'd you call them? Those turtles outside?"
"Cabal," Jaxson replied. He was all sorts of confused. "Shadow Legion."
"Yeah. Okay. Council wants to hear about the space turtles. And Rohan? Director Jinjye's authorizing this, so you're overruled."
"I see," Rohan murmured.
"Thought you would. No one dies!"
"Calus dies," Jaxson vowed. "He dies here and he gets no further."
Quinn made a face. "Wow you Earthlings are intense-"
"This... this is a colony?" Osiris questioned. "This place? It's a city?"
"Yep."
"A human city?"
"Yep."
"You've been here all this time? Since the Collapse?"
"Yep."
Osiris blinked. He wobbled.
"You alright space zombie?" Quinn frowned. "You don't look so good."
"Leave him be," Jaxson warned. "Stay back."
"I'm fine," Osiris muttered.
"He's not," Ghost said. "He needs medical attention. Jaxson-"
No, Jaxson thought. He knew Ghost could hear. This is a trap.
I know.
A bloody trap.
I KNOW! But Osiris won't last much longer. That much Arc - he'll be breaking apart on the inside. Mortal bodies aren't meant to hold that much Arc. Only reason he's still alive is... Ghost trailed off. Jaxson. We don't have a choice.
Irxan was looking at him again. Jaxson wished he could have heard her input - or have her decide in his stead. Traveler above... "My friend needs a doctor," Jaxson said. He allowed his weapons to dissipate. "Do your passes cover medical expenses?"
"We have a universal healthcare system here," Quin remarked. "Yeah, sure, we can help. But no more fighting please? You alright with that?"
Jaxson exhaled. "Jus' don't give me a reason to."
"That's... fair. That's fair, right Rohan?"
"That's fair," Rohan murmured. He approached - but Jaxson put himself in his way.
"No," he said vehemently. "No. You're not to touch him."
"Son-"
"You're infected."
Rohan's expression grew stony. "There's much you don't know."
"Don't you fucking dare touch him, or her, or me. Keep your Vex paws to yourself. You too." Jaxson gestured flippantly to Nimbus. "Neither of them come within ten feet of us. That clear?"
"That's... yeah, sure thing honey," Quinn said quickly. "That's a-okay. We'll have to airlift you out, though. Can't have you walking through the streets."
"They stay away."
"The hunks'll keep to themselves, promise."
Jaxson nodded. "Good." He glanced to Irxan. "Good?"
"Good," she begrudgingly agreed.
"Great." Jaxson turned back to Quinn. "How long'll it take?"
"Already en route." She smiled warmly. "Welcome to Neomuna."
AN: Thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!
One thing I'd have liked from Lightfall was a little more conflict in the Last City-Neomuna department. Plenty of reason to be wary if not outright hostile to one another. Nimbus here is absolutely going to be a little shit about it because they're young and impressionable like that and people rolling in with powers to match their own must be a nightmare. I prefer that.
On the Warhammer front, think I have to put out a disclaimer, that this isn't a dimensional hop over but a lore-fusion kind of fic - as I do for most of my Destiny fics. For the the duration of my Lightfall interpretation Destiny will be taking central focus, but some may have noticed I've sprinkled some 40k influences in already. That'll ramp up the further I get. Just have to set the stage so to speak. Thanks for taking the time to read!
