A/N: Enjoy the chapter! Sorry for the delay, got swamped by work! Also, leave some goddamn reviews!
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As always, throw stone.
-
In the distance, the last streaks of Light receded from the sand as the players withdrew. Transmat flashes winked out one by one, leaving behind broken Cabal barricades, scorched dunes, and the heavy smell of burnt oil.
Void stood on a ridge and watched the Cabal regroup.
They weren't panicking. They were disciplined. They moved like a machine that had taken a bad hit and was already correcting itself. Legionaries dragged the wounded behind cover. Psions relayed orders in clipped bursts. Engineers swarmed over consoles, running diagnostics as if the battlefield was just another system error.
Obsidian hovered at Void's shoulder, his eye dimmed.
"Vanguard message," Obsidian said.
Void raised a brow. "Read it."
Obsidian's voice shifted into that official cadence the Tower loved.
"Gather any intel you can on the Cabal chain of command in the Mars theatre. Priority on command nodes, authority codes, and leadership structure. Do not escalate. Confirm and return."
Void breathed once, slow. Then he smiled, faintly.
"Greedy bastards," he muttered.
«They want to know their enemy,» Zamyr murmured, quiet in his skull. «It seems that they've decided to act.»
Void's eyes narrowed. "Yeah. I know."
He turned back toward the Cabal outpost.
Void rolled his shoulders once.
"Alright," he said. "Let's go steal some data."
He let his presence thin and became unnoticeable. His body blurred into a flicker of motion, and then he was already at the gates of the Cabal outpost.
Void flowed between broken slabs and half-collapsed cover, staying where the light didn't reach.
A pair of Legionaries marched past, weapons low, talking in their harsh tongue. Void caught only fragments of what they'd said, but he could infer what they were doing.
'Checking their perimeter and counting their losses.'
Void drifted closer.
The outpost's outer gate was half-open, letting in work crews and medics. A Bronto-like transport rolled in, its wheels grinding sand into the concrete. It carried crates stamped with Cabal markings inside.
Void timed his move with the transport, merging with its shadows.
He slid in closer
Inside, the base smelled like metal and heat. The air carried a faint ozone bite from recently fired weapons. The corridors were wide enough for Cabal to march shoulder to shoulder.
Void moved through, scuttling along its corners. A maintenance hatch sat open in a side corridor. Cabal engineers crawled in and out, cursing at the relays. One of them slapped a panel hard enough to rattle the wall.
Obsidian whispered. "They're running system diagnostics. They're checking for faults in their Mars relay network."
Void shrugged. "Good. As long as they don't check the Phobos relays, we're fine."
He slipped past, deeper into the outpost.
The control wing sat at the centre, guarded by heavier troops. Shield bearers posted like statues. Psions stood near them, heads tilted as they attuned to the comms traffic.
Void stopped.
He watched the pattern.
Two guards turned every twelve seconds to check a side hall.
A door opened, a medic ran out, then shut again.
Void flickered in a controlled burst, crossing through the guards the instant they looked away.
In one breath, he was in the side corridor. And the next breath, he was pressed against the wall beside the control door.
The door slid open from within.
A Legionary stepped out, adjusting his armour plate. His eyes flicked up. But Void was already gone.
He flowed behind the Legionary as if he had been born from the man's shadow, and then he slid into the control room.
Inside, there were a dozen machines, all continuously blinking and flaring up. Consoles wrapped in Cabal plating. Screens showing Mars topography, patrol routes, relay pings, and casualty reports.
Void moved along the edge of the room, keeping behind a tall console bank. He reached the main terminal and pressed his palm against it.
Obsidian hovered, eye brightening.
"Linking," Obsidian whispered.
The terminal resisted.
Cabal security was blunt but deep. It wasn't elegant. It was layered like armour.
Obsidian's light flickered once, then steadied.
"I can only access partial data. Looks like the Cabal doesn't really have sensitive info stored on here."
Void watched the room while Obsidian worked, reading and deciphering the Cabal's level of information. "Get whatever names you can."
Obsidian hummed. "Names are encoded. I can extract patterns. Location stamps. Unit association. It will take time."
"Then take what you can," Void said. "We only need enough for The City to start drawing a plan"
Obsidian's light pulsed faster. Data streamed.
"I have enough," Obsidian whispered. "A somewhat complete command chain, but most of the names are encoded."
Void nodded. "Good."
He took one step forward, and the shadows enveloped him again.
He slipped through the base like smoke through cracks, retracing his path.
At the outer gate, a Cabal patrol moved in.
Void pressed himself into the shadow of the departing transport and waited.
A second.
Two.
Then he slid out behind it and vanished into the red dunes like a spectre, racing through the sands.
A few seconds later, Void was already back on the ridge, watching the base shrink behind him.
Obsidian pulsed a transmission.
"Sending Vanguard the data package now."
Void nodded once. "Let's leave, set the trajectory back to Venus."
His figure shimmered, and Void transmatted to his ship.
—
[Io, The Rupture]
Asher Mir muttered and groaned, reading through hundreds of records a second.
Asher's eyes flicked across projected files.
Awoken archives.
Vex references.
Anything that used the term "Gate Lord" in any language that mattered.
He grunted to himself while he read, rejecting most of it on reflex.
"Redundant. Useless. Speculation."
He scrolled faster, having spent days on the awoken archives, he'd developed a sense of what was useful. Unfortunately, there wasn't much referencing a gate lord.
That was until Asher glossed over a small insert of text. A report of a Vex incursion occurring on the Awoken shores a few hundred years ago.
Asher's hand froze mid-motion.
His brows drew together.
He read it once.
Then again.
His eyes widened a fraction.
A small, humourless chuckle escaped him.
"Oh," he murmured. "Of course."
Asher's grin was sharp, annoyed at himself for not seeing it sooner.
"The only recorded instance of a recovered Gate Lord corpse," Asher said, voice low. "I should've guessed it. Only one person could've possibly done this."
"Only one person could've had the power to dismantle a Gate Lord and keep its remains." Asher cackled again.
His Ghost paused and tilted towards him. "Who?"
Asher's smile didn't soften.
—
[Orbit, En Route to Venus]
Void's jumpship had barely cleared Mars when the comms pinged.
Asher Mir's channel.
Void raised a brow.
Obsidian opened it.
Asher's voice burst through, crackling with a manic energy.
"I have a solution," Asher said.
Void leaned forward in his seat. "You found a way to summon a Gate Lord?"
Asher cackled. "No."
Void blinked once. "Then what?"
Asher's voice dipped, satisfied.
"I found you something better."
"Something better?" Void sighed, "What the hell are you on about?"
"A dead Gate Lord."
The cockpit went quiet.
Void stared at the starfield and felt a jolt run through him.
"A dead…" he repeated, slower, like he was making sure he'd heard correctly.
Asher chuckled again, smug now. "Yes. Dead. Intact enough. Stored. Which I'm sure you'll appreciate."
Void's heartbeat kicked up once, sharp.
"Where," Void said.
"I'd rather not talk about it on the open channel. It's a bit...sensitive." Asher's eyes narrowed; he couldn't risk even the slightest chance of this leaking out.
Void realised his intention.
He exhaled, tight and controlled. "I'm coming."
He cut the call and snapped his fingers.
"Obsidian. Change trajectory. Io."
Obsidian's eye brightened. "Routing."
Stars shifted. The ship adjusted, smooth as a blade sliding into a new angle.
Void leaned back, eyes narrowed, thoughts already moving faster than the ship.
A dead Gate Lord likely meant a key. It meant a shortcut.
It meant the Black Heart was no longer a problem beyond reach.