Chapter Text
The Choral Minotaur let out a single warbled cry before it’s pearl-white and gold chassis was consumed by a violet light.
The hunter exhaled deeply and reloaded his void fusion rifle. The Conductor’s Vex the in this sector had been taken care of. They’d been persistently occupying the area he’d been assigned to clear out to acquire one of the Aionian artifacts, it had been a tough skirmish, involving a powerful Vex mind, but he’d made it out on alive in the end. At least the Aionians wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore, at least for now. And he had the stranglet.
He turns to comms channel on. “Lodi, we got the stranglet, plus, those Vex loitering around the campus won’t be bothering anyone anymore.”
“Thanks a bunch Guardian, it’s a load off everyone’s minds thanks to you.”
As the guardian turned off his communications, his ghost manifested next to her. Her shell shimmered with bright oranges and blues, vanguard colors as she hovered down next to her guardian, watching him pry the line rifle out of a dead hobgoblin’s grasp.
”You’ve been at this for hours, Aren. Give it a break.”
”Can’t.” He grunts and managed to tear open the casing on the weapon with his knife and delicately rearranged its internals. “Not when I’m this close.”
Aren Sabot, an awoken lightbeaerer hunter, had been resurrected by his ghost a year ago. Since his arrival at the Last City, he made his way up the ranks at a steady pace. While he wasn’t a particularly standout guardian-in both his Crucible training records and strike reports, his reserved and rule-following personality made him unusual for a hunter.
He also had a fascination with alien tech of all kinds, taking them apart and putting them together in different ways, the Vex in particular taking his interests primarily with their mysterious workings. That, being The other reason why he was on Keplar; to pursue his hobby away from the disapproving stares back at home.
The ghost let out a small groan and shined a light down on the internals. “This isn’t going to work, you can’t rewire a Vex gun to work for guardians.”
”That one weapon from the Vault of Glass was made for human hands.” Aren insisted and clips one tube before quickly fusing it to another with solar light.
”That was a special case, if you wanted a mythoclast so badly, why not get a fireteam group together? Why waste time trying to DIY your own version?”
Aren paused his work to look at Pepper, his gunmetal and yellow accented armor, his ragged coal-black cloak that he’d had since first resurrection stood out boldly against the muted yellowish greens and browns of Keplar’s surface and eerie fauna.
“Nobody wants someone like me on their team.” He said bitterly and returned to his work.
His ghost blinked and lowered her upper shell. “That’s a load of- Look, that one mistake was years ago. Those guys were a bunch of turds anyhow.”
The hunter carefully connected the casing of the vex gun back into place and lifted it up. It’s narrow grip felt off to hold, he squeezed the grip and aimed it straight ahead at a group of vex in the distance.
The line rifle hummed with energy like he’d seen from the receiving end many times before. He focused on the radiolaria core of the nearest goblin and…
The line rifle suddenly exploded in his hands just as it was about to fire.
Aren was resurrected in a daze sitting in a small smoldering crater, the vex he was aiming at had wandered off without so much as noticing.
Pepper stared down at the busted weapon next to him. “At least it didn’t explode right away this time.“
The Arcadia-class jumpship exited the atmosphere of the Oort Cloud. It kicked up its NLS drive and warped into light speed towards it’s next destination, Earth, home.
“You sure it’s a good idea to take that busted gun back with you?” Pepper asks.
”I’m not bringing it to the City, I’m stashing it away somewhere, somewhere where the Cryptarchy or the Praxic order can’t take it from me.”
”Why the Cryptarchs? They only want to study this kind of stuff.”
”You mean they want to hoard all the artifacts for themselves and let it gather dust in some vault?“ The hunter shook his head. “Just because they’re the City’s official history archivists doesn’t mean they’re entitled to just hold out their hands and expect you to give them what they want. If they want what I’ve got, they’ll have to take it themselves.”
Aren’s ghost was about to reply when the ship shuddered and veered slightly on its side, she looked around in alarm. “Hold on, I’m detecting a faint fluctuation outside the ship...” Pepper says uneasily. “Maybe we should get a bit further away from here before we try warping back.”
Aren shook his head dismissively. ”Just more of Kepler’s time interference probably. It didn’t affect us the dozen times we’ve flown here before, it won’t affect us now.”
“But…”
“Pepper, we’re halfway there to Earth anyways, Niik and the other shipwrights can check out what’s wrong later.” He says, then more softly. “Trust me, it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Well, if you say so. I trust you…” the ghost replied and settled on her guardian’s shoulder to watch the colorful stream of blue and red pass by them.
As the ship exited warp space and approached the planet, something was instantly amiss.
“Guardian, when did Earth have so many ships in low orbit?”
“Extraction in t-minus thirty seconds.”
A fury of machine gun rounds tore through the incoming voteless horde, the Illuminate converted husks falling like flies under the might of managed democracy. Behind a fallen statue, four elite troopers valiantly held the line against waves of alien invaders.
”Reloading!” D2 shouts and tossed out his machine gun’s drum mag and smashed another into his weapon to continue firing on the Illuminate. He throws a spare stim to his left, an injured B3 takes it and jabs it into his neck before joining back into the fight
M4 reached for another magazine but found nothing, he silently cursed the enemy and glanced over his shoulder at his back; a portable hellbomb, a smaller, transportable version of Super Earth’s signature explosive payload, but no less lethal. He turned to his squad, if this siege didn’t fall, none of them would be leaving alive.
Failure would mean the death of freedom.
“Pelican-1 to Helldivers, arriving in fifteen, hold position.”
They’d come too far now to fall.
”I need stims!”
The mission must succeed, at any cost…
“I’m out of ammo.” He said and turned his backpack to his team. “K1, B3, D3, get to the evac. I’m going to blow these squids apart.”
There were no protests, no objections or hesitation from any of the divers, the bomb strapped to M4’s back was activated and begun a ten second countdown. His squad mates nodded and ducked into cover as their squad mate vaulted over cover.
”Liberty speed you along.” K1 murmured quietly.
The trooper ran at the enemy like a man possessed, with little to no regard for his well being as he ran straight into the heart of the mob.
”For Super Earth!”
Blue energy bolts and grasping hands tore at his cape and armor, his visor was cracked by a swing from an overseer’s staff and an arm broken. Yet M4 pressed on and dove to the ground as dozens of voteless piled on top of him, the hellbomb’s timer reached zero.
The resulting detonation took out the entire attacking force and a large chunk of the city block, leaving nothing left but charred body parts and fallout. The remaining three Helldivers emerged from cover and silently saluted their fallen comrade as the extraction shuttle landed behind them.
“M4 was a true patriot. May be aspire to his bravery.” B3 says reverently as they boarded.
K1 took a moment to look back out at the M4’s crater grave for a moment as the shuttle’s door closed.
As the ship ascended into space back to the Super Destroyers above…another ship would make an emergency crash landing…