Void's HUD blinked.
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MISSION COMPLETE: The Grand Ishtar Archive
[REWARD: +GOLDEN AGE BLUEPRINT (Subspace Ring) , + GOLDEN AGE BLUEPRINT (Energized Coil Cannon)]
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Void's eyes glistened as he read through his two rewards.
'Subspace ring?'
He knew that while the guardians did have spatial storage, it was in the form of engrams or an ancient space matrix cube that served as a portable vault. However, neither was fast and required hours of crucial setup even to get functioning. The City had invested thousands of hours in painstakingly creating the vault network that connected every planet where they held an outpost.
But a subspace ring? This was beyond his expectations. Was it an invention similar to his system inventory? The thought of it ran shivers down Void's spine. The Golden Age of humanity was truly a terrifying and brilliant era.
As for the energised coil cannon? He'd only ever heard of the Wardcliff cannon. If the former was anything similar, it was another great reward.
"Ahm." Gallida cleared her throat. She examined the conflux again, this time peering over its details with keen intent, "So, you guys wanna go in or not?"
"What?" Void raised his brow; he snapped out of his trance and gave the conflux a good look. The conflux sat like a vibrant radiolaria heart set into stone. A circular module had been sunk flush into the masonry, and inside it a sphere of milky radiolaria turned on itself in slow layers. White light pulsed out from the core and reverberated like a breath.
Void stepped closer and looked at Taeko-3 with confusion.
"What she meant is that we can decode the conflux to let us enter the Vex network." Taeko-3 gently raised her palm, "Comet, show them."
A ghost with a strikingly orange shell shot out from her palm and flittered around her. It paused for a heartbeat and then its eye pulsed, projecting the internal structure of the Vex conflux with great detail.
"The Vex conflux is like a node. A small door that allows us entry into the Vex network. Though frankly it's all a bit more complicated than that." Taeko-3 explained.
"What about the door, the one that led to their vault underneath?" Elsie cut in.
"If there were any entrances here, they are long gone." Gallida shook her head, "I suppose the moment the bomb went off, the Vex restructured the entire place." She paused and then slapped the conflux's shell, "But lucky for you, I can make this baby work to let us in regardless."
Void hummed in thought. There were plenty of chances in the game to enter a Vex network. But they were always approached with great caution. Plus, multiple spatial splicers were helping to stabilise the network.
However, even then, that was a game. If he were to enter the Vex network now, who knew what would happen?
Gallida leaned in, grin audible. "Relax, it's really not that bad. Sure, there will be a few bumps here and there, but it's a smooth ride in and out."
Void glanced across. "You have been through one."
Taeko-3's helm cocked. "We've been on Venus since the Hunt," she said. "Venus is littered with smaller nodes. We mapped them out and started going through them one by one. All of our fireteam got out alive, "A thin smile touched her voice. "Well, on most days. Some had to be revived afterwards."
Gallida nodded. "Yup. But there's a big difference. All those other nodes? None were as old as this."
Elsie's eyes narrowed. She trudged up beside Gallida and looked right at the centre of the conflux. She studied the module's ring, scanning its structure and peering at the strange fluctuations of radiolaria.
"The conflux seems stable, for now," she said. "If it is possible to enter with a stable way to get out. It'll be worthwhile. Otherwise, we risk getting lost in the Vex network."
Void nodded. "Alright, we'll consider going in with you both."
Gallida clapped once, briskly. "Great, we'll need the extra hands. I'll make it super safe, don't you worry about that."
She slid a kit from her belt and knelt by the module. Her Ghost unfolded a thin lattice of light and fed it into the rim. The radiolaria brightened, then dimmed, like it was listening.
Taeko stood guard around her and watched the work, palms loose at her sides. "Once she manages to crack the initial matrix", she said, "the gate will open to a pocket. That spatial pocket will hold for an hour at best. But, the moment the Vex realise the pocket exists, they'll work to patch it out. Then the pocket collapses."
Elsie's gaze stayed on the sphere. "An hour is plenty of time to find out what's inside."
"Plenty," Taeko said.
"That is, as long as the Vex don't find out." Void quipped
"Please, you'd be surprised how careless those machines get." Gallida worked fast. She murmured a pattern to her Ghost and spiked three taps into the module's lip. Tiny arcs jumped. The radiolaria rolled and then steadied.
Something in the wall groaned.
"Almost," she said.
Gallida keyed the last line. The sphere flared white and went clear. Space around the module wrinkled, then settled. The sphere expanded, its edges folding inwards as it folded to create a wormhole.
"Path open," Gallida said, delighted. "Welcome to their living room."
Void rolled his shoulders. "One hour."
Taeko-3 nodded. "Less if we make noise."
Gallida glanced at her. "But...we always make noise."
"I guess.." Taeko-3 sighed.
"Fine." Void cut in, "Just focus on getting out in time."
"Got it." Gallida went first, boots finding a surface that wasn't there. She leaned forward and disappeared with a soft distortion that made the air behind her ring. Taeko followed, passing through as if she were stepping behind a thin waterfall. Elsie dipped her head and walked into the light.
Void set his hand on the module's rim and stepped in.
The last thing he saw was the sphere closing like a pupil.
Then the room forgot it had walls. The light around him stretched until it became a tunnel and then a sky and then a floor. Time stuttered once, like a heartbeat tripping, and smoothed into a steady run.
They were gone.
-
They arrived one after another, feet landing on nothing that still held. The world formed around them in quiet clicks. Lines drew themselves into a grid. Squares stacked into towers. A blank horizon unrolled and met a sky with no colour. Everything looked half-made, like a canvas without paint.
Void steadied. Elsie took a slow turn. Far ahead, jagged spires rose in clumps and leaned toward a point they could not see.
Ahead, Taeko-3 lifted a hand and waved them on. "Follow here," she said. "Keep moving. The good stuff is deeper."
Gallida's laugh skipped ahead of her.
They walked. The space expanded with each step. Lattices peeled open and revealed a white space that formed into an endlessly stretching flat cubic plane.
As the four walked around, they found many Crates with Golden Age stencils scorched faintly on their sides. Half-built Vex frames that lay in columns, limbs unjoined, optics dark.
Taeko brushed a gloved knuckle against a deconstructed Vex frame. "They stage it here," she said. "An in-between. Objects wait for transfer. Manual, not automatic. Vex on the other end will take it when they're ready."
"Which means they are busy elsewhere," Elsie said.
"Good for us," Gallida answered. She had already dropped to a knee beside a deconstructed Vex Mind and slotted tools from her belt. Her Ghost cast a thin pattern over it. Numbers flowed. Gallida's grin sharpened. "Better for me."
Void knelt by a crate stamped with the Golden Age Logo. He ran a hand over the letters, then touched his Ghost.
"Scan," he said.
Obsidian drifted close and opened its eye. The cone of light passed through the crate and made a soft, satisfied chime. "Golden Age firmware." He moved from crate to crate, each scan stacking into a list that grew heavy in the corner of his HUD.
Meanwhile, Elsie peeled away towards a pile of Vex frames. She grabbed the frame and pulled it apart piece by piece. A moment later, the entire Vex frame was dismantled, and she took one look at its core and slipped it into her pocket.
Elsie kept moving and took to working on the discarded Vex Minds within the place. She quietly tinkered with its grey matter shield that prevented any physical touch. Through the use of her extensive knowledge and research, Elsie had already figured out how to disable the shields manually. A technique that had not yet been discovered.
Just as the grey matter shield flickered and disappeared, Taeko-3 and Gallida were stunned to silence.
Gallida scooted closer, looked up, then again, and stopped pretending she wasn't watching. "How did you do that?" she asked.
Elsie did not answer right away. She broke open the Vex Mind's chassis, taking out its central core for examination. "I have dismantled many Vex Minds. It wasn't hard to figure that out."
Taeko joined them and leaned to see. "Not like this," she said under her breath. "We would have taken forever to do that." Taeko glanced at Elsie, and slowly the look in her eyes shifted, leaning towards acknowledgement.
"I've never met a Vex scholar like you. You must've spent decades ripping Minds apart to know them this well." She gave Elsie a polite nod.
Elsie's eyes flickered ever so slightly; she only replied with a tiny nod, neither proud nor shy. "I did. It was a horrid experience."
At the other end of the subspace, Void was surveying his surroundings till he reached a seemingly 'dead end'. The walls of the space seemed to turn and furl inwards, as if a spiral. As he observed the strange phenomenon, Void instinctively knew this was the "Exit".
He eased toward it curiously, and Obsidian hovered at his cheek, scanning the fluctuation of space. But just as Void crept closer, his wrist buzzed.
He stopped and turned his hand. The locator chip lit up, then stuttered, then went full bright. It washed his palm in frantic light. The signal climbed past normal, then climbed again.
"Pahanin? Is everything okay?" he said, glancing at Obsidian.
"No contact," Obsidian answered at once. "Nothing on City bands. No Nightstalker ping. You are not receiving anything from them. This...seems to be entirely something else. It's like, the Vex network is connecting to that chip."
The space quivered. A ripple ran through the lattice like wind through tall grass. Far spires leaned the wrong way, as if the horizon had shifted. Shapes sparked into place across the floor.
The chip buzzed harder. The light pulsed in a rhythm that felt ominous. Finally, space shifted, and slowly hundreds of radiolaria lattices appeared one by one.
Obsidian and Void shared a glance; one look was enough to say the words unspoken.
'Run.'
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A/N: Hope you guys ENJOYED the chapter. Leave a damn review, throw some stones. Checkout my original (Last Hero of the Academy) on WN!
As always patre*n for more juicy stuff.