"Unidentified corvette, this is the MSV Pacific. You are flying a stolen Alliance craft. Power down and prepare to be boarded."
"Told ya." Nova said from where she floated over Rigel's shoulder.
"Yes, you're very smart. Help me evade these idiots without killing them."
The transmission had come through not two minutes after entering the Sol system. The corvette had no stealth capabilities, so they lit up every scanner that was poised to pick up incoming traffic. The Alliance's Sol-stationed fleet had sent a frigate to investigate the 'stolen' Alliance craft that entered their territory.
Rigel powered the thrusters up as he worked to outmaneuver the frigate. The advantage to piloting a smaller ship was maneuverability. The disadvantage was speed. The frigate would catch him if he tried to run. Luckily, Rigel was paranoid and had expected an encounter like this, bending towards the territory that would have belonged to the Awoken in his old life. Even having never been touched by a battle between light and dark, Rigel had spent decades dodging asteroids in his jumpship. This was his domain.
"I'm filling up their comms with white noise and giving their scanners false positives, but they'll see through it soon. We need to disappear." Nova said, hovering next to the navigation panel set into the wall to the right of the pilot's seat.
"How accurate are this ship's jumps? Could we slip right into Mercury?"
"With you doing the calculations we'd die, but I could probably get us into orbit without killing us. You'd have to dive right after to avoid showing up on any scanners."
"Get ready. I'm going to launch all of our missiles and detonate them."
"...Why?"
"The blast will propel a couple asteroids towards the frigate. They'll have to alter course to avoid dying, then we can jump."
"...Sometimes I forget why you and Cayde got along so well, then you go and do something like this and remind me."
"Yes, yes. I'm stupid and potentially suicidal. It comes with being a Risen. Firing missiles." Rigel flicked a switch, sending every missile the ship had to the far side of an asteroid. The volus had only supplied enough munitions to fill the silos, but Rigel hadn't cared. He'd just produce replacements once his glimmer forge was working.
The cockpit lit up as the payload exploded, sending debris flying in all directions. Rigel watched his scanner. The moment the frigate peeled out of pursuit to find cover from the debris, he handed full control over to Nova.
"Get us in."
"Jumping."
The engines fired, and Rigel found himself in the familiar stream of light signifying a ship mid-jump.
Much faster than would've been possible in his old ship, the corvette slowed out of jump, already touching Mercury's atmosphere.
Not wasting a moment, Rigel took back control and turned into a nose-dive towards Mercury's surface. "Are you picking up anyone following us?"
"Negative." Nova replied. "The explosion probably disguised our trajectory enough for us to make a clean getaway."
"Huh. It's almost like I'm really good at this."
"Yeah shut up, asshole." Nova said, floating back over to look through the glass with Rigel. "This is…weird."
"Yeah. I know how you feel." Rigel said somberly as Mercury came into focus. The planet he and Nova knew had been one of bountiful forests and grass-filled plains corrupted by the Vex, but still full of life. This…this was an inhospitable rock whose surface boiled and was devoid of anything. "At least no one's likely to come looking for us here. Who'd be stupid enough to live here?"
"Someone who didn't stay dead." Nova pointed out.
Rigel slowed the ship down as they approached their destination. Without the vex's towers and infrastructure, most of his landmarks had disappeared, but the crater itself was still enough to remind him where to fly. Rigel carefully maneuvered his ship down into the heart of the crater where a long, wide crack, invisible from the air tucked as it was underneath a sturdy stone overhang, opened into a massive chasm. Rigel lowered the ship down into the hole, using the exterior lights to guide himself through the pitch blackness.
"Ground contact in 3…2…" Nova counted down, using the ship's scanners to detect the cave floor.
Rigel set out the landing gear and enjoyed the gentle tremor that traveled through the ship as it made contact with the ground.
"Let's take a look around, shall we?" Rigel said as he unstrapped himself and stood up.
Nova followed him through the ship, activating her floodlight as the ramp lowered into pitch darkness.
"We're going to need to make some serious modifications here." Rigel said as he began scanning the simple rock floor and walls. There were two directions that were so deep that Nova's light didn't even show all that was there, simply disappearing into a black void.
"It took us years to fix it up the first time, and it was still a work in progress. And don't forget that was with us being able to head back to the city for supplies. We're going to need to forge everything we use out of glimmer. This…We don't have enough food to last you long enough to get this place operational."
"No, we don't." Rigel agreed, patting Ace at his side. "Luckily we have enough bullets."
Nova spun around to look Rigel in the eye, accidentally blinding him briefly. As her concentrated beam of light passed over his eyes. "Rigel! You know I hate watching you kill yourself."
"I do, and I'm sorry. But we're stranded in a strange universe where the good guys have tried to arrest me twice for doing nothing wrong. Everything's so…hard here. There's no unity. Everyone's suspicious, spiteful, and trigger-happy. And it's me saying that."
Rigel found a waist-high boulder and sat on it. "Say what you will about back home, but at least everyone was working together. We went about our work in different ways, but we all knew we could count on each other if our backs were against the wall. Here? How many illicit transactions did we witness just walking through the Citadel? Never mind Omega. It's…I'm lost Nova. And no, I'm not moping. I just have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing in a universe where every problem I fix might be undone by the people I tried to help."
Rigel looked up at Nova, being careful to keep her floodlight out of his eyes. "This is something I can do. I can set up shop here, make weapons, do some work on the ship to make it unrecognizable to the Alliance so we don't get shot down the moment we break through the atmosphere, and plan while you monitor events through the Extranet. If anything colossal comes up, let me know and we'll go help, but from what Tela said, we'd need to take on an entire system-spanning government to stop those slavers. I can't do that without being at full strength. I need time to build up to where we were back home."
Nova sighed, panning her shell left to right, mimicking a shaking head. "Fine. But we spend no more than a month here. That should be enough time for us to make a forge and change the ship enough to fool Alliance scanners. Maybe make you a rifle or two. But I will not let you hide here while the universe moves on around you. If we're stuck here forever, then we need to learn to be a part of this world."
Rigel braced his hands against his thighs and pushed himself to his feet. "Then I guess we'd better get to work. The sooner we make a forge, the sooner we can make a light so you can help me instead of playing flashlight."
Nova's light beam narrowed like a closing eye before winking out completely, plunging the area into complete darkness. "I can not 'play flashlight' if it makes you feel better."
"Jokes on you. I have a HUD that has…Nova, turn my HUD back on please."
"Mmm… I don't think I will."
"Nova, I can't see my hand in front of my face. Please bring the light back."
"I don't know…I can see just fine with my scanners."
"Then give me back my scanners so I can see too."
"Why don't you just throw a Solar grenade?"
"Throwing a miniature sun blindfolded? That sounds like an excellent way to kill myself and destroy the ship. Please turn the light back on."
"I've yet to hear a good reason."
"Oh great Nova, bringer of illuminance and resurrection, please bathe your unworthy follower in your holy radiance." Rigel said, his tone flat as a pancake.
Nova giggled, turning Rigel's night vision back on. "It took a couple hundred years, but you've finally accepted your place."
"Uh huh. Let's get to work." Rigel said, heading back towards the corvette to retrieve the spare parts he'd bought from the volus. He hadn't bought them for the ship, but he wasn't going to tell anyone that.
X
Rigel ran out of food after the first week, but starvation was an old friend. He'd learned in the dark ages that the easiest way to fight starvation was to shoot himself in the head and let Nova bring him back refreshed. Was it a mentally healthy way to deal with hunger? Probably not, especially since he kept shooting his brain out of his skull, but it worked, even if a certain corner of the cave was sporting a new paint job.
During that first week Rigel had also managed to get the glimmer forge built. It was a piece of crap that died three days after he made it, but those three days were enough to get enough glimmer to construct a proper forge, one like Misraaks had shown him. The Eliksni were far more in-tune with technology than every human with the exception of the Brays. Their glimmer forges were works of art.
While Rigel worked on the Eliksni forge, Nova took the time to construct a new shell, replacing the one that had been nearly shattered in their transit. Made from the light red, sturdy stone wall of the cave, it didn't have the character her shell constructed in the Dreaming City did, but it would protect her. After completing the eliksni-style glimmer forge, Rigel got to work constructing some help.
Frames had seen widespread use throughout the Tower and the Last City proper since their respective foundings. They were low-maintenance, sturdy, and intelligent enough to complete tasks in isolation without achieving true sentience. Rigel had never really used one in any major capacity, but if he was going to be outfitting this new trove without outside assistance he could use the help.
Using large rocks and loose sand from the surrounding area to feed the glimmer forge, Rigel created enough glimmer to build a basic frame. It wouldn't be combat-capable, but he only needed it to do basic work around the area. With some input from Nova about the color scheme, Rigel created a simple white-gray frame. He named it Tim.
Tim had some personality glitches. For instance, he liked to clap small, fist-sized rocks together at random intervals, but he was strong and coordinated enough to move large boulders around to feed the glimmer forge. Considering Rigel had never constructed a frame himself before, he considered Tim a victory and got to work on his ship.
The armor plating in this universe was better than it was back home in some ways and worse in others. There were pros and cons to trying to replicate it, but in the end Rigel just decided to go with what he knew, replicating the same armor he'd used on his Edge of Worlds. It had the potential to draw attention to his ship, but it would – when used in conjunction with the aesthetic modifications Rigel made to the thrusters – also ensure that no one recognized the Fenrir-class corvette for what it was. Tim churned out glimmer from the forge while Rigel made use of that glimmer and fixed up the ship himself. As a finishing touch, Rigel painted 'Blind Well' on the ship's hull, fulfilling a bet he'd lost to Petra. Nova handled matching the ship's new name to its digital profile. With a new look, a short-range transmat beacon, and new stock of munitions, Rigel's work on the ship was done.
In the third week, Rigel finally got to arming himself appropriately. He'd kept an auto rifle, shotgun, and sniper from his raids on the batarians, but none of them were overly appealing to him. The feel of them was weird. They'd been designed to be held by any of the Citadel races at any point in time, forcing the grip to be applicable to many hand and finger structures. That was without even touching on the fact that Nova still hadn't figured out how to construct thermal clips like she did all of Rigel's other ammo from random scraps on the battlefield. As Cayde always said, keep your weapons sharp. If you weren't comfortable using a gun, don't unless you have no other choice.
Most guardians who found themselves in this position would be stuck with whatever they had on hand or could find, but Rigel wasn't most guardians. There was a reason he referred to himself as a Risen. Where guardians would spend their free time seeing who could fall from the Tower and die furthest from the base, Rigel hung around Banshee-44 and learned everything he could about weapon creation and maintenance. He'd been stranded before, and he wanted to know how to look after himself if it ever happened again.
The most difficult part of the process of creating a Risen's weapon was imbuing the weapon with an energy, be it Void, Solar, Arc, or Stasis, but so long as you had access to the element and the patience to do it right, it wasn't an insurmountable obstacle. Combine Rigel's access to all the needed energy through his connections to the Light and Dark and his technical know-how with Nova's dedicated library of weapons and calculation capabilities, and Rigel could rearm himself.
That then led to the question of what to program the glimmer into. Nova stored data on every weapon Rigel had ever wielded, the new mass effect weapons included. Some were impossible to forge without certain key ingredients – like a gun made from the worm of a hive god that randomly chatted at Rigel when it was feeling irritable – but the vast majority of his digital armory was now available to Rigel once more. He wanted a wide breadth of options, but not so many that he ran the risk of having something stolen. That would invite the kind of attention down on Rigel's head that one didn't easily survive. In the end, Rigel decided to forge four weapons. No more, no less.
The first was Quickfang. While the dagger Petra had given him was strong and sharp, Rigel wanted a melee weapon with better reach without sacrificing speed. He'd seen the programs people could use to turn their omni-tools into blades which meant he needed a way to defend himself in melee combat, a way he was trained in. Rigel had never been the best with large, sturdy swords like Saladin, but he'd learned a lot from Sjur and later Petra about more lithe, dextrous blades.
The second weapon was the Empty Vessel. Rigel had been too open with his use of his paracausal abilities. He was lucky Tela hadn't been able to get her hands on a video feed and instead only knew he destroyed the warehouse. If she'd seen the things the Warlock was capable of, there was no telling how their confrontation would have gone. Rigel decided he needed an area of effect option that wouldn't expose his powers. Thus, a reliable grenade launcher was a must.
The third weapon was the Fugue-55. While he had never been able to compete with Cayde when it came to sniper rifle marksmanship, he was still one of the better shots in the Tower. Having a long range option that he was familiar with would help him if he found himself in a position where he was facing impossible odds like the old days.
Finally, Rigel constructed a Lunulata-4B. After spending so much time learning the ins and outs of bows when he'd received Wish Ender from Sjur's paracausal manifestation in Mara's Ascendant Realm, it would be a waste to not continue using them. The Lunulata-4B was the simplest to make that resembled Wish Ender enough for the skills Rigel had picked up to crossover, so the decision was a simple one.
With his weapons complete, Rigel had three days left over to fix up the cave. He didn't have enough time for anything fancy, so he just set up enough lights to properly illuminate the area tied to a generator that ran on Solar energy that he could power whenever he parked his ship. He told Tim to construct a second glimmer forge to speed up future production and to have a large stock of glimmer ready for him when he returned, then to power down when his work was done. Rigel didn't know exactly when he would be back and didn't want Tim waiting for what could be months without any word. He'd wake the frame up when he came back.
"That was surprisingly productive." Nova said as they boarded the Blind Well and started the engines, preparing to leave their new hideout after hiding the glimmer forge as well as they could without more infrastructure.
Rigel shrugged as he strapped into the pilot's seat and pulled his helmet on. "When you have nothing and you're stranded in a strange reality, you find yourself motivated to get shit done. Are we ready to lift off?"
"Yep. Please don't crash into the overhang. It would really suck if we had to spend another three months here fixing the ship."
"Well, at least you took enough scans while we were here to make fixing it possible. It would just be an enormous pain in the ass."
Being careful not to clip the Blind Well on the edge of the stone overhang. Rigel still wasn't quite used to the ship's size, but that problem would remedy itself as he flew it more.
Coming clear of the overhang and the crater, Rigel sent more power to the engines and lifted them out of the atmosphere. "Can you jump us close to the relay? The corvette is different enough from a Fenrir model to pass scanners but I'd rather not have the Alliance know what planet our stash is on."
"Will do. Jumping in 3…2…1…"
Rigel was forced back into his seat as the ship accelerated to jump speed. The trip was relatively short considering the distance traveled. The thrusters on the Blind Well were far superior to those on Rigel's old Edge of Worlds.
"Where are we headed?" Nova asked as they approached the relay.
"Let's go to Illium. Tela might be done with whatever she was up to by now, but I'd like to check it out just in case. Worst case-scenario, she cleaned up after us and we hit the Hegemony hard enough to send them back to the stone age as thanks."
"Roger that. Hold on to something."
The relay hummed to life as they approached and Rigel couldn't help but grin as he felt himself slingshotted through the stars.