A/N: Enjoy chap, THROW SOME REVIEWS. Leave a stone too. Do check my Patre*n for more.
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Void ran.
Above, a pale ceiling with no clouds gave a single ripple.
He raced around the last corner and found them where he had left them. Elsie had a Vex mind opened like a steel flower. Petals of armour hung on invisible hinges. Elsie held one seam apart with the flat of a knife and eased a thin probe into the glow. Her movements were measured. Gallida watched from her shoulder, recording the process and murmuring under her breath.
"Run", Void said, sliding into view, "Now!"
Before they could even question him, the space flinched. A tremor ran through the lattice and kept going, a wave that moved without sound and left a rustic taste on their tongues.
Elsie recognised the ripple and immediately packed her tools, folding them into the forearm slots of her coat. Gallida and Taeko snapped into action, racing towards the entrance.
"Get to the conflux!" Gallida shouted, and her Ghost unspooled a thin white ribbon into the air. It hung there like chalk on dark slate, a line drawn through a world that had not finished deciding what it wanted to be.
As the guardians sprinted back, hundreds of Vex Goblins assembled around them from ankle to crown, armour plates snapping into place with clean little clicks that made your teeth ache. Minotaurs grew their spines, their frames laden with their characteristic black armour, and Harpies bloomed like petals flowering around a core.
A legion of Vex approached the four, certain of their success. As such, there was no rush, no attack. The Vex only observed as they crept closer.
Watching almost a thousand Vex reconstruct and stand against them, Gallida and Taeko-3 were nervous. Even Elsie paused, her hands looming around the wristwatch, unsure of what to do.
"They're confused." Void cut the tension, "They're waiting, and watching our every move." His eyes carefully traced the Vex that continued to surround them. Finally, he looked to Gallida and shot her a glance.
Gallida crept closer to the Conflux, her hands already moving as she carved strange runes into the air. The space around the conflux folded, revealing a wormhole.
The Vex snapped to attention; the wormhole's appearance was not within their expectation. Sensing that it was no longer possible to observe, their blasters charged.
Every Vex goblin, Minotaur and Harpy gathered energy, ready to shoot at a split second.
Taeko's eyes widened, and she bolted, stepping into the depths like it was air and nothing more. Gallida jumped back into the wormhole.
The blaster's fired, thousands of lasers shot towards them.
Void unsheathed his sword, a pale light spiralled at the fringes of his blade. But then he felt the familiar tug of time that yanked his senses. He looked back.
Elsie instantly slammed down on her wristwatch. Time rippled outwards, and the lasers paused.
Elsie took the opportunity and flickered away.
As the last one remaining Void took one last glance at the Vex still relentlessly firing through stagnant time, he too jumped.
-
[Ishtar Academy, Crater Bowl]
Light pulsed around the conflux as it spit out four figures onto the cracked crater floor.
A dense Ether haze clung to their ankles. Dust ran in long streamers along the ground as if the air had tides. The conflux in the wall pulsed once as if startled to see them again and then steadied.
Void found his balance, took a sharp breath and shot towards the spherical conflux. He drove his blade down into the rim and pushed. A thin pale crawled along the ring like frost finding glass. The white sphere tightened on itself, glow thinning as it cracked open like a fragile pearl.
On the other side, something heavy struck the conflux, and a spatial shockwave tore through the crater and slowly faded away.
Gallida let out a laugh that broke in the middle. "What in the Traveler's name was that?"
Void worked his fingers off the hilt and set the blade back to rest. His forearm still stung from the chip overheating. "Don't know. I went to the end of the space, and before I knew it, the Vex were already back. So I ran."
Taeko's eyes angled towards the cracked conflux. "Right call. If we really fought them inside, we'd probably be the ones kept as exhibits. But I've never seen them gather so fast."
Elsie waved towards the conflux, and a strange wave washed over it and returned to her. She frowned and looked at the two warlocks. "The Vex are growing restless. Since we just stole from them, I'd recommend you two lay off Venus for a while."
Gallida sighed, "Looks like we're taking a break."
Taeko nodded once. "Looks like it."
Elsie returned a faint smile. She truly had checked the Vex activity and given the two an earnest warning. While it was a short meeting, Elsie found their company entertaining, which is why she truly hoped they'd do as they claimed.
Finally, she turned to Void. A silent exchange passed and was held. The two merely nodded.
She faded between blinks, her figure thinning to a shimmer and then going with the wind. The dust took a second longer to move again, as if the world had held its breath while she left.
Gallida watched the empty air. "Ghostsword," she said, curiosity slipping past her guard, "who is she really. I have never seen anyone pull a Vex mind apart like that."
Taeko-3 hummed in agreement.
"As I said," Void answered, "a friend."
He stood there a heartbeat longer and let the crater settle inside his bones. An idea slid into his mind.
"That said, since Venus is off the table for a while", he said. "If you guys are still looking to work on the Vex. I've got a place."
Void used Obsidian to transfer the two coordinates to his workshop.
"The Reef?" Taeko replied.
"It's a workshop." Void nodded. "I've got all the tools we'll need. Plus, I've got quite the Vex problem on my hand right now."
Gallida cocked a brow. "What is in it for us?"
"And also if your friend is with you," Taeko added, "I don't think you'd need us. She's quite talented."
"She's not always there," Void said. "And I am not running this through a committee. Unlike the Vanguard, I don't have a lot of rules. As long as it's related to the Vex, you'll be able to do it."
They weighed it in silence. Gallida's grin thinned to thought.
"We will let you know," Taeko said at last.
"Do that." Void glanced once at the broken Conflux, and he pinged his ship.
Engines whined high and thin above the crater rim, then his figure scattered away into glimmer.
—
[Workshop, Thieves' Landing]
The outer door hissed and slid aside, and the scent of oil and old steel ran out to meet him. Void stepped in slowly, eyes up, ready to dodge instantly. The rails overhead were quiet. No drones screamed across the ceiling with scrap payloads. No test mortars rattled in their cradle.
He eased down the hall and peeked around the corner on instinct. Eyes darting with caution, Void crept closer to the hall of the workshop till he saw.
Pahanin and Kaviss sat on the black leather sofa, a low table between them and a deck fanned wide. The Eliksni's prosthetic clicked as he adjusted his grip on a card he had half stolen from Pahanin's hand. His lower pair of eyes narrowed with a look humans would have called focus. Pahanin watched him with that flat patience he wore like armour, a patience that made people confess without being asked.
"You sure?" Pahanin asked.
Kaviss frowned, the tendons in his forearm shifting under metal. He set the stolen card back where it had been and picked the one next to it. He drew it slowly, like the card could change its mind.
Pahanin's lips curled, barely there. He laid his hand down.
A full set. Clean. Unanswerable.
Kaviss's eyes widened. His mandibles tightened, then loosened in a sound like a hissed laugh cut in half.
Void cleared his throat.
Both of them snapped their heads toward the doorway, then down at the cards, then back at him. They were on their feet in the same breath. They drifted to the workbench with forced professionalism, like children pretending to be statues when the teacher walked in.
"Do not let me interrupt your research," Void said, dry.
Pahanin recovered first. "What are you doing back this early?"
"Venus was a mess," Void said. "House of Winter detonated an ether bomb and unearthed an old Vex conflux. We took care of it, well, sort of."
Kaviss eyed Void's armour, his jaws clicking as he detected the familiar scent of ether. "You're drenched in Ether, did you get hit?"
"Nope. It was quite far when it happened. But the residual ether was still crazy." Void glanced at the bench.
The work surface was crowded with half-built coil housings, a ring of fine copper laid in a spiral on a ceramic bed, a cluster of field clamps, and a hammered plate that looked like a museum of mistakes. On the wall above it, a sheet of grease pencil scrawl mapped a subspace ring with notes that only their hands could read. "What did I miss?"
"Nothing," Pahanin said too quickly. "Everything is fine."
Void looked from one to the other. He did not have to say anything.
"Mostly fine," Kaviss said, to be fair.
"Obsidian," Void said.
Obsidian propped over his shoulder, cheerfully observing the Workshop's records. "Hmm." It said, "No catastrophic explosions in the last six hours."
"See," Pahanin said, and managed to make it sound reasonable.
Void dragged a chair with his boot and sat down.
Pahanin leaned his hip against the workbench and watched him. "Strange. Something about that look....You found something, didn't you?"
Void smiled. "I found a lot. Golden Age technology. Blueprints, schematics, damn near everything we need to reproduce a subspace ring and a coil cannon."
"Sub-space ring..." Pahanin's eyes widened. "Did you actually find it?" He hurriedly leaned closer.
"Sure did. But first." Void sighed and turned his wrist to reveal the locator chip. "I've got some questions."
Pahanin's eyes dropped to the locator chip, and he frowned. His fingers slowly grazed the surface of the chip. "It's...burnt. What did you do?"
"Me? No." Void said. "It was the Vex network. Just before I saw the Vex appear, this thing went ballistic. I started receiving hundreds of pings. Thought it was you, but when I checked, there were no messages. Maybe it just malfunctioned?"
"Malfunctioned?" Pahanin watched him a second longer; his frown tightened. Pahanin paused and took a closer look, pinching out the chip from Void's gauntlets. "There's no possible way for it to malfunction. I spent decades on this."
Pahanin put the chip back onto the workbench and used a lens to magnify the chips internal circuit.
"Tell me how it happened," he said.
Void told him. Not everything. But just enough for him to diagnose the problem.
Pahanin listened without interrupting.
"The chip," Pahanin said softly. "You think it was bouncing off the Vex. Or rather, it got caught in their frequency?"
"Obsidian said I was receiving and sending messages," Void said. "Since no one actually contacted me, I am thinking the Vex probably took over the electronics."
Kaviss cut in, "That would not be possible. The Vex technology does not use waves. It cannot interfere with yours directly unless it is designed to do so."
Void raised a brow, "How would you know that?"
"Simple, our splicer EMPs do not work on the Vex. If we cannot interact, neither can they." Kaviss crossed his arms.
"So it wasn't the Vex?" Void scratched his chin.
"He's right." Pahanin nodded, using a small electric tweezer to poke and prod at the internal circuit. "But this message you received. You said it was a stream, an endlessly recurring one? How did it display?"
"Huh? Well, the chip began beeping and lighting up. A second later, all it did was blink on and off repeatedly." As Void blurted out the words, the gears in his head turned. "Like some sort of-"
"Like some sort of code, yes." Pahanin chimed in, his hands tuning the chip's circuit. "The chip was designed to store the last message it received in case of failure. I've gotten its circuit back up. We'll be able to decode the message."
Void nodded solemnly. The moment he thought the word code, possibilities ran wild in his mind.
Pahanin grabbed an interface wire and plugged in the chip to a nearby data pad. A moment later, an endless stream of messages coursed through the datapad's screen.
"Looks like the chip failed because it couldn't handle the speed of transfer." Pahanin grit his teeth, "It's nearly double its capacity." He kept analysing the message.
"And?" Void replied.
"I am decoding it right now. We'll have it soon." Pahanin read the stream and typed out an algorithm to classify its results.
Minutes later, he scribbled down one letter on a datapad.
As time passed, one letter became two, and soon two became four. But that is where Pahanin stopped and heaved a sigh, "This..this is the limit. Whoever sent this message probably didn't calibrate it right. If we want to decode the whole thing, it'll take us years."
"That's fine." Void nodded helplessly, "Just give me what we got for now."
Pahanin scratched his head, "Sure, but it's nothing conclusive. Just five random letters." He passed the data pad to Void.
But as Void's eyes read the letters, a strange heat passed through him, and a shiver ran down his spine. He slowly mouthed the letters, one by one.
'P R D T H"