//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: The Long Far Gone // Story: Long Far Gone // by A-P-A //------------------------------// Meridian bay, Mars. 1000 years prior to contact. Mathew had been floating upwards for what seemed like an eternity, he couldn't see anything above him, and it was to dark to see anything below him. Nervousness had begun to creep in. Cayde had been insistent that the device had to be connected to something, but the amount of time spent ascending was beginning to get worrying. "Ghost, how long have we been on this thing?" "About five minutes Mathew." Ghost deadpanned. Maybe an eternity was a bit of a stretch. "Relax guardian, everything's fine. Stop being so par*fizz*iod*fizz*uardian, your brea*fizzzz*up on m*fizzzz*" Cayde's 'good natured' mentality speech was broken up by radio static. "Cayde? CAYDE?!" Shouted Mathew "Something nearby is blocking the signal, I'll try and pinpoint the location." Ghost opened up into a ball of swirling light and began to scan for the location of the jammer. He pulsed every few seconds, sending out another barrage of radio waves. Suddenly everything when dark, ghost stopped scanning and turned to Mathew. "I found out what's jamming us." He said ominously "Is it Fallen?" "No, none of the signals match, it's radio disruption technology beyond the likes of any I've ever seen." Ghost turned on his light and began to examine interior of the chamber they were flying through. The walls were of the same purple quality as the pad below, shimmering blue lights could be seen behind them, like tiny stars. "What is this place?" Whispered Mathew "I am uncertain, it may be some sort of Vex structure, though the design of these walls are like no Vex architecture ever recorded." There was a moment of quiet, just the sound the air rushing past them. All of a sudden Mathew felt their ascent slow. A large hatch slid open above them to reveal a huge chamber. They floated up through the hatch and hovered in place as the large door slid over beneath them, locking them in. The humming stopped and Mathew fell to the floor, just managing to stick the landing. He stood up and looked around. The chamber they were in was enormous, countless blue and pink lights blinked and danced over the shiny purple surface of the walls. It had an almost hypnotic effect. A large holographic display activated on a wall nearby, as if begging to be touched. Mathew stared at it for a few seconds before turning to his ghost. "I suppose I should probably take a look at that." Quipped ghost as he glided over to the holo display and began to poke at the computer systems. Mathew played with the hilt of the sword strapped to his thigh. It had been a nightmare to collect all that hadium just to forge the blade. The relic void crystals were no easier, but the end result was worth every second of work. His friends at the tower often asked why he named it 'Dark-drinker', if they had ever seen the blade in action they wouldn't have had to ask. A whistle from his ghost snapped him out of his stasis. "Find anything yet?" Asked Mathew "Yes but I can't make sense of it, all I can find are more of those peculiar symbols and a lot of mentions to some sort of...flood, I'm not sure, but this structure certainly wasn't built by any known party." There was a short moment of silence as ghost dug deeper into the terminals memory banks. "This information is older than anything I've ever encountered, it's pre golden age, this place must be over a thousand years old. I'll keep searching." Mathew nodded to his synthetic partner and took another look around the large room they were in. Upon closer inspection he noticed that there was a large blue object sitting off to one side of the entrance passage. He pulled out his fusion rifle and made his way slowly towards it, flicking the safety off with a audible click. As he approached he began to get a better view of the thing in front of him. It was rather dusty but from what he could see it appeared to be some sort of vehicle. It had a curved front end, almost like a claw, while the rear rose up to a flat... Roof? No, it was almost like a gun position. Now that he looked closer he could definitely see what looked like a retractable cannon. Around where he presumed the pilots seat would be was what looked like a turret swivel, although the weapon had been disconnected. The back of the craft was a similar story, a pair of small rudder like fins were visible on each side of a slowly rotating circular device, a reactor maybe? Whoever designed this thing probably should have put more effort into protecting it. It seemed as though creators of the vehicle had only really one intent with most of the design, and the more he looked at them the more things seemed to add up. "Is this some sort of... Tank?" He whispered to no one in particular. "Mathew, You might want to come and take a look at this." He dragged himself away from inspecting the armoured craft and back across the room to his ghost, who was floating next to the now bright red console. "What is it?" Asked Mathew His ghost blinked for a moment, as if processing something, then continued. "This terminal makes reference to a number of things regarding the Vex and the Traveler. It also helped me find out where we're located in regards to the Cabal outpost." There was a brief hum before a large holographic image of an object appeared, floating in the center of the room. It was long and shaped almost like a large squid, although without the tentacles. There was a blinking light near the base of the wider 'head' part, he could only assume that was where they were located. "What, is that?" Mathew was to stunned to even react. This thing was huge, larger than any single structure in the city, or anywhere else for that matter. Even the Vex citadels on Venus were nothing compared to this. "That, is a Covenant CSO-Supercarrier, the largest starship ever recorded, and we are currently in the gravity lift bay, about three kilometres off the ground." "Exactly how large are we talking, because I don't think we could have missed something that big if it was that close to the grou..." "The ship is exactly 28.96 kilometres long, that's over fifteen miles! It's huge." Ghost interrupted "But how didn't we notice it when we were on the ground, it would have taken up a huge portion of the sky." "The reason the ship has gone unnoticed for so long is because it is currently imploying a cloaking technology not unlike the one we used to get aboard Oryx's Dreadnought. Although this one seems far more reliable..." Mathew shuddered at the memory, he's glad he's never going back to that god forsaken grime pool of a ship, after he and his fireteam killed the Taken King the place really fell apart, the Cabal sky burners retreated and the hive were left to try and cut their losses, it didn't help that the Taken themselves lost most of their power when Oryx was destroyed, they decomposed over time and eventually faded back to the realm which they had crawled from in the first place. Now the ship drifts among the rings of Saturn in a decaying orbit, eventually it'll fall into the planets atmosphere and will be lost forever. Mathew snorted, all the better in his opinion. "So your telling me that there was a fifteen mile long starship, just floating above Mars for god knows how long and not a single one of our warsats or even the Cabal fleet could detect it." Mathew was extremely confused, how could something so large go completely unnoticed. "According to the flight patterns I accessed it's been in the system for longer than the Cabal themselves, although it spent a large amount of time in orbit around Europa. The ship's systems are like nothing I've ever seen, so advanced, yet so primitive at the same time. It's like a huge time capsule." "You said that the ships computers mentioned something to do with the Vex, and the Traveler for that matter. Mind sharing? Or is it above my pay grade?" Mathew raised both his eyebrows under his helmet, not that his partner needed to see of course. His ghost chuckled. "Well, fine. Since you asked so nicely. The system talks an awful lot about the Vex, not so much of their existence and current intentions, but of their creation. Mathew felt himself lean in. Now this is interesting. "From what I could gather the Vex are closely related to a group of ancient machines known as 'Sentinels'. I believe the Vex may have either spawned from them or were created by them originally. To what end I have no clue, but I can say that it means that if the Vex were created, then there must be a way to 'uncreate' them. As for the Traveler, when I was browsing the various symbols in the ships database I came across many images of the Traveler and objects like it, one that particularly caught my attention was of something called 'The Ark', I'm not sure what it means, I'll have to look into that later. On the subject of interesting symbols, I also found this..." Ghost flashed an image of a shield like design on his hud. In the center there was an image of a star with two equine looking beings swirling around it. They appeared to have both a horn and wings, Mathew remembered from the various history and culture classes he had taken as part of his training that a horse with a horn was named a 'unicorn' while one with wings would be called a 'Pegasus'. What was even more interesting was that neither of these creatures were suppose to be real, just myths and legends. Little is known about what they originally signified, but very little study is put in to find out. Mathew thought for a moment, if these creatures had both wings and a horn then what would they be called. 'Pegacorn'? 'Unisus'? It didn't really matter, the question was, what were they doing in a place like this? "That's... Odd" remarked Mathew "It seems in stark contrast to the rest of the symbols we've seen." "That's what confused me as well, none of the other symbols even closely match this one, it's like it was created by a different party entirely. Anyway..." The Image vanished. "I found a lot more links to this 'flood', I'm still unsure of what it is or whether it's something we should be concerned about." Ghost stopped for a moment. "I'll see what else there...CONTACT!" Ghosts sudden volume change startled Mathew, but not enough to stop I'm from noticing his tracker going crazy with movement, he whipped around and drew his fusion rifle, directly facing his attacker. He wasn't ready for what he saw. A huge behemoth of a machine was facing him, larger than a truck, and to make matters worse, it was airborne. It let out a huge metallic roar and charged a previously hidden weapon, Mathew barely had enough time to shade step out of its path before hundreds of razor sharp pink projectiles showered the adjacent wall. "What the fuck is this thing!" Yelled Mathew, while dodging another volley of spikes. "I don't know, I've never seen a Vex model like this before, it must be new!" Ghost was yelling now as well, more out of panic than anything else. Just as Mathew went to fire a fusion burst into the metal monstrosity, a transparent bubble shield sprung up, effectively immunising one half of its body. "Oh come on that's just CHEATING!" Yelled Mathew. "Looks like you're going to have to hit it from behind, if you can tether it in place with your bow you could attack its rear without it rotating." "Why the hell didn't I think of that earlier, great job sparky!" "Have I ever told you just how much I hate that nickname." "More times than I can remember bud." Mathew made one last shade step, before leaping five metres into the air and readying his void bow. Just as he was about to lose an arrow, a high pitched screech took him well of guard. "STOOOOOOOP!" In his suprise Mathew launched the void projectile off target, it soared across the machines shield before impacting the wall behind it. The void energy danced for a few seconds then fizzled out. The machine froze in place, before speeding down a previously unseen corridor, round a bend and out of sight. Mathew landed in a heap of arms, legs and armour. His head was spinning. He groaned and sat up, taking in the peculiar site before him. A small object floated just a few feet away from him, it's single pink eye glowing in the darkness. It spoke in a voice so soft that a mere breeze wold have rendered it unheard. "Lights, on." Instantly, the intire chamber was illuminated, Mathew stumbled backwards and landed against something solid. During the fight he had managed to make his way round the large machine and was now lying slumped against the menacing form of the alien 'tank' from earlier. His ghost was equally stunned. Mathew looked up at the small orb that was floating nearby. It seemed to be watching him with almost eerie fascination, as if he was the single strangest thing it had ever seen. It began to move towards him, and he instinctively flinched away, it spoke again, it's voice like silk. "There is no need to be afraid reclaimer, I mean you no harm." Reclaimer? What did she mean by that, Mathew struggled to control his ragged breathing, it took some time for him to formulate a coherent response. "Who. *breath* Are you?" The orb brightened in colour for a moment, before fading back to its regular purple. "My name is 031 Exuberant-Witness, I am... *sigh* I was the monitor of the Genesis installation." She paused again, if only for a moment. "Welcome reclaimer, welcome aboard the Long Far Gone."