"Remind me again why we came to Calcutta?" Rega-7 demanded as she hunkered behind the overturned cargo truck. Plasma rounds splashed off the rusted hulk as the Walker's rotary cannon fired. Eliksni chatter barked around them, and she ducked lower as Shock rounds spiraled over her head.
"Unknown energy signal was detected here," Wahei's tone was bright, heedless of the Walker's rotary cannon swiveling in her direction. As plasma chewed through the ceramacrete K-rail, she Blinked to another piece of cover, a similarly rusted hulk of an air-car. "And there's a lot of artifacts to be found here. Master Rahool and Ikora are both eager to get anything we can recover here. Two behind you," she added, as an afterthought.
Rega swiveled around and raised her hand cannon, snapping off two quick shots, and two Dregs fell back. "Did either of them mention that Fallen are swarming all over the damned place?" She flung an incendiary grenade into the hole after them, and heard howling from within before flames shot out along with the whump of the explosion.
Wahei tilted her head, and Rega knew the Awoken's lips were pursing in thought behind her helmet. Please don't get distracted by the language, the Hunter thought to herself, and sure enough, Wahei's tone was thoughtful. "Do Eliksni swarm, per se? The ruins of Calcutta are, indeed, teeming with them, but swarming is a verb better suited to describe the Hive--"
"Not the time, Wahei!" Rega shouted as her Hawkmoon barked three more times.
That was as far as she got before the Walker's plasma cannon whined as its capacitors primed. She had to duck the salvo that melted the top half of her cover. She leaned over the remnants, firing at the Walker, but cursed as the bullet just caromed off the tank's head. "I can't get a shot through its armor!"
Wahei sighted through her scout rifle and then shook her head. "And I can't get a good shot on its joints." She shifted her aim and fired off a quick series of shots, crippling a pair of Vandals, who had to painfully scurry into their own cover. "We can't let this thing keep us pinned down."
Do all Warlocks love to state the obvious? Or have I just spent too much time with Wahei? Rega rolled her eyes. "I'm aware of that, Wahei." She darted to another overturned truck for cover as the Walker's rotary cannon chewed through the first. She looked up as a Dreg poked its head out from an overhead window, then cocked an arm back to throw a shock grenade. She shot the elbow and the Dreg dropped its explosive, and she heard panicked shouting before the explosion shattered the rest of the building's windows. Now would be a good time for our Titan to turn up. "Where is Bolvan?"
"He stood watch all night," Wahei reminded her. "I left him with the ships to sleep it off." She twitched her head to one side to avoid a shock rifle round and tossed a vortex grenade toward the wrecked storefront from which it originated. When the building collapsed, the Warlock gave a satisfied nod. "Ghost, try waking him up," she said, and the floating bauble materialized beside her.
"I've been trying, but he keeps muttering 'snooze' every time I get through to him." It swiveled to look toward Rega, and even with her helmet blocking her expression, the Ghost shrank back from it. "I'll keep trying." It vanished out of sight again.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"You should've woken me up sooner, is all I am saying," Bolvan complained as he piloted his jumpship over the ruined city. He swept his eyes over the scanner readings, trying to find the rest of his fireteam.
"I tried." His Ghost could not sigh, but gave the electronic equivalent. "Honestly, you shouldn't need to sleep so much. If you just used your Light more effectively--"
"Not the time, Ghost," the Titan commented and then sat up in his seat. "I see them." He whistled. "That is a lot of Fallen down there. And that Walker is pretty well-entrenched." He peered at it. "I think the Fallen put more armor on it, too."
His Ghost leaned toward the window. "You're right. What's that phrase I've heard Rega use to describe the Fallen? 'Crafty little buggers?'"
"That's the one," he agreed. "Can you raise them on the comms?"
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"I can't use my Nova Bomb!" Wahei shouted. "It won't do anything to that Walker's armor! Can't you zap it with your sun gun?"
"Golden Gun can't make it through that armor either!" Rega shouted back. "And I only get three shots and a limited window to use them! I don't want to waste them!"
They both stopped as their comms crackled and the booming voice of their Titan greeted them. "Good morning, ladies! Having some trouble down there?"
"About time you woke up, lunkhead," Rega muttered.
"I didn't want to wake up," Bolvan went on cheerfully. "I was having a very nice dream."
Immediately, Wahei perked up. "Oh? What about?" The Warlock was a keen oneirologist.
The Titan chuckled. "We-e-ell, I'm not sure it's suitable for mixed company..."
The heel of Rega's hand thumped against her helmet. "Not the time, Bolvan!" She slapped a fresh magazine into her hand cannon and picked off a pair of Dregs that had poked their heads over some rubble. "While you were having a 'very nice dream,' some of us were trying to actually do work."
"Mm-hmm," Bolvan agreed. "And that's worked out splendidly, hasn't it?"
"Are you going to help out or not?" Rega snapped.
"Well, that's the problem," he sighed. "Even from up here, I can see that Walker's been modified with heavy armor. Even my Gjallarhorn can't do anything to it, and a Fist of Havoc would just annoy it."
"Well, that's a first," Rega glanced at Wahei and smirked. "I thought the typical Titan strategy was just 'shoot it until it dies.'"
Wahei nodded. "With a backup strategy of 'if at first it fails, hit it harder.'"
"It's worked out very well for me so far," Bolvan pointed out.
Wahei glanced to one side as her Ghost materialized again. "I've been analyzing the Walker's armor, and Bolvan's right. It's too thick to penetrate with anything less than an orbital strike."
"And any surviving orbital defense arrays are under Rasputin's control," Rega sighed. "And the cranky ol' warmind isn't likely to spin them up just for us."
There was a thoughtful silence from the comm. Wahei and Rega shared a look, then glanced skyward. "Bolvan," the Warlock was quiet, "what are you thinking?"
"When in doubt, go all out," the Titan replied. "I have a plan." They saw his jumpship go screaming vertically over the city.
"Why?" Rega threw another incendiary grenade toward a pack of Fallen trying to move on her position, and picked them off as they scattered. "What are you going to do?"
Instead of directly answering, he addressed the other member of their fireteam. "Wahei, during the Reef Wars, how did Mara Sov break the House of Blades' defenses on Mars?"
"The Queen and the Techeun Coven hurled an asteroid at it," the Warlock replied promptly. "You can still see the crater at the Hellas basin." There was a pause, and then Wahei looked at Rega. "Uh, oh."
The Hunter's eyes narrowed behind her helmet. "Why 'uh, oh?'"
Wahei stood up and fired off a flurry of shots from her scout rifle before she hurled a Nova Bomb out on the field. "We should get to better cover."
Rega understood. "He's going to try an orbital strike? With what?"
"It's Bolvan," the Warlock pointed out.
The Exo froze and looked skyward. "He's not."
"Yes, he is."
"From orbit? Freefall?"
"This is part of Titan strategy," Wahei reminded her. "'If at first it fails, just hit it harder.'"
Rega stared at her, then looked skyward in disbelief. "I'm going to kill him."
"Not the time, Rega," Wahei advised. "Just run."
Rega cursed and started vaulting over cover as she retreated from the site of what would soon become ground zero. "Bolvan, you crazy son of a bitch!"
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"I feel obliged to point out," Bolvan's Ghost remarked dryly, "that this is a crazy plan."
"Crazy's worked out pretty well for us so far." Bolvan finished entering in the auto-pilot commands. "It certainly worked when I took down that Sand Eater Valus with my bare hands."
"He broke your spine in three different places," his Ghost reminded him. "And was moments away from crushing your head with his fist when you broke his neck."
Bolvan snorted. "Look, I'm not saying this is going to be a painless endeavor, anymore than going mano-a-mano with Valus Dra'aut was."
"This isn't just going to be painful," his Ghost sounded exasperated, "this is going to be lethal! Even supposing you don't incinerate during the descent, you'll be going so fast when you impact that you'll be liquefied!"
Bolvan just flashed a grin. "Yeah. And if it works, they'll be talking about it at the Tower for years. The Ultimate Fist of Havoc-- from orbit!"
His Ghost gave an electronic sigh. "There's no talking you out of this, is there?"
"Nope!" He sealed his helmet on and slapped the mat-trans button. He materialized in the void beneath his jumpship, pivoting himself around to plant his feet on the underside before kicking off and sending himself streaking toward the ruined city far, far below him. As he did, he let out a jubilant cry of "GERONIMO!"
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"At least the Walker isn't following us," Wahei tried to be optimistic as she and Rega stayed in cover in one of the ruined buildings. Its facade and the room around them was getting riddled with plasma rounds from the Walker's rotary cannon, and occasionally the building shook from its main cannon fire. They were at the tank's maximum range, but the Fallen seemed unwilling to lumber it out of its entrenched position to pursue the Guardians.
"Maybe not," Rega-7 agreed. "But the rest of the Fallen in the area are converging, and there's too many to take on at once." She glanced out of her cover, then sighed. "And they're bringing in pikes and shock cannons. We're screwed."
She heard the thoughtful pause from the Warlock, rolled her eyes, and started a mental count. She'd reached four when Wahei spoke. "I'm not sure that's proper terminology. Screwed implies either we'd be riddled with fastener bolts, but the Eliksni are more likely to save such bolts for their mechanical tinkerings. And in the more vulgar usage, I hardly think the anatomical discrepancies would allow such a--"
"Not the time, Wahei!"
They had to duck as a fusillade of shock plasma burned across the building front. "Any minute now, Bolvan!" Rega called out. She could hear the Fallen Captains ordering their Dregs to throw grenades in, and when that happened, they'd be dead. While their Ghosts could revive them, it was an embarrassment that Rega liked to avoid.
Then she heard it: the distant crack of a sonic boom, followed by the more familiar crack of thunder. She peeked from cover and saw a streak descending from the heavens with lightning trailing in its wake. Air shrieked as the falling Titan came down at terminal velocity. "Duck and cover," she said to Wahei, and they both curled into a ball in their cover as the Eliksni outside turned at the sound of impending doom.
Bolvan's lightning-infused body hit the armored Walker with all the subtlety of a pre-Golden Age atomic bomb, and unleashed about as much devastation on the immediate vicinity as the expanding shockwave of his Fist of Havoc spread outward. The Walker crumpled, then detonated. The dual explosions caused buildings to collapse and vehicle hulks to be scattered like toys. The air itself crackled with residual Arc Light energy, and those Fallen that hadn't been taken out by the explosions went down from the energy-saturated air.
It was about ten minutes before Rega and Wahei unfolded themselves from their shelter. Static flickered in the dust-filled air as they approached the crater left by their Titan's fall from the heavens. The Warlock frowned as electricity arced along her armor and then shivered slightly as she felt it tingle along her skin. "Dammit, this is just going to play havoc with my hair," she sniffed.
"Believe me, it's no picnic for me," Rega muttered.
"You're an Exo," the Warlock pointed out. "You don't even have hair!"
"Yeah, and I can feel all this static tingling along my circuits and internals," the Hunter snapped back. "You meatbags wouldn't understand."
They stood at the massive hole left by the point of impact, peering over the rim. "'hoy, Bolvan? You alive down there?"
There was a pause. And then a light sparked up below. A Ghost shone its light up at them, then showed Bolvan, sprawled out among the half-slagged wreckage of the Walker. Even freshly revived, there was still smoke coming off of his armor. "That," he declared, "was awesome. Don't even try to deny it."
Rega lifted her eyes to the heavens, and then started cursing him, his parentage, his questionable intelligence, his manhood, and was starting to creatively detail all the anatomically-impossible things he should immediately do when he started laughing. "See, that just means you care," he said amiably.
"On the plus side," Wahei added, "he did take out all of the Eliksni in the vicinity. We should be relatively safe from counter-attack for a while."
Below, Bolvan was already sitting up and looking around the underground cavern. "That's good," he said, "because I think we may have hit a jackpot down here." He beckoned them and clambered to his feet as they jumped down from above.
Wahei looked up at the name emblazoned on the ceramacrete walls. Even with the decay of age and the growth of mold and vines along it, the name was as clear as ever: CLOVIS BRAY.
-=-=-=-To Be Continued(?)=-=-=-
Notes from Jay:
So I got into Destiny late. I played a bit during the beta, but wasn't that interested in multiplayer games. Additionally, there wasn't enough story for me to sink my teeth into, and that's one of the things I really look for in a game. I figured it was too late to get into it for The Taken King, its year-two expansion, but friends convinced me to get into it for Rise of Iron, the year-three expansion. And I've been hooked since.
The fantasy elements of the futuristic post-apocalyptic setting caught me, and the lore within it in the form of the Grimoire cards-- detailing things like the lost wonders of the Golden Age, the cultures of the antagonistic races like the Fallen and the Hive, and so on, it all appeals to me as a writer.
This piece is the potential first part of a series. Initially, it was just going to be a minor fic-let about a crazy fireteam, especially their Titan who decides to literally drop from orbit onto an enemy position. But now I think I might write some more about what they found inside the ruins of Calcutta.
That's one of those things, as well, that I like about having a big open setting like Destiny has given us. While in-game, you only get to visit specific parts of each planet, it's established that Humanity had colonized and populated the entire solar system (and possibly beyond) before the Collapse caused everything to fall apart to the state it's in by the time the game starts. You can sometimes hear chatter in the Tower about places on Earth that are ruined. (Master Rahool sometimes mentions 'The Manhattan Exclusion Zone,' as an example.)
See you in the next installment, whenever that might be.
-=Jay 2K=-
17.Dec.2016
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