You've Got Time ( a Destiny Story)

Cross the Line

You can't feel the heat until you hold your hand over the flame
You have to cross the line just to remember where it lays
You won't know your worth now son, until you take a hit
And you won't find the beat until you lose yourself in it

Satellite – Rise Against

-

September 02, 2880; Burning Lake, Luna

The lunar dust hung in a fine haze over the battlefield like the gunsmoke of some ancient war. The center of the field was still, but there were still pockets of fighting along the edges. It was nothing too serious, thankfully, just directionless Thrall and the occasional Acolyte. The real threats had been mopped up already.

Perhaps 'mopped up' was the wrong term, more like 'hammered repetitively until they finally gave up' or 'filled with half their body weight in lead'. It had been a long fight. Azra, for the first time in hours, settled back on her heels and took a moment to breathe. Regolith and chitin powder clung stubbornly to her clothing. Thankfully her helmet had a good filter on it. Her guns would need some serious cleaning after this.

The sound of heavy footsteps sparked her attention. She readied her sidearm and turned-

But it was no Knight, just Lord Shaxx. His grenade launcher was slung across his back. His fists were stained with Hive gunk. "Azra Jax! What news have you for me, Hunter?" He asked.

"Shaxx," she nodded in respect. "Everything's clear on this end. Just thrall, but..." She looked at the scattered, still-sparking corpses around her and shrugged.

"And what of casualties?" He knelt to inspect an Acolyte's skull and got shocked for his efforts. The chitin still held charge. "Sorry," Azra said, "may have gone a bit... overboard. Everyone in my team is fine physically, but Veikko-4's lost his Ghost." She grimaced. "I know one of the D.E.C. fireteams lost someone too. Maybe more. Comms have been spotty. We've been going ping-based, passing from Ghost to Ghost. News is slow coming."

Shaxx rose from his crouch and dusted his hands off. "That's fourteen casualties so far."

Azra nodded. "These Hive are nasty."

"You're bleeding," Shaxx said, sounding alarmed. Azra's hand went to her side automatically. Indeed her fingers came away tacky and red. She must have bled through her bandages.

"Cover me?" she asked. There were no hostiles in the immediate area, but she didn't want to get caught out of armor if some did show up. Lord Shaxx nodded and readied his grenade launcher.

She shrugged out of her vest as Spark summoned her least-favorite cloak. It was already haphazardly torn from her first attempt at medicine. Guardians didn't usually carry gauze (why bother?), so cloak fabric would have to do. Azra mechanically went about ripping it (or what was left of it) into strips as she talked. "Their swords are... they aren't quite like anything I've seen," she explained, "Like edged Darkness. Cuts don't heal too well. If I hadn't dodged, if not for my armor..."

"I don't know if I could rez you from a death from a weapon like that," Spark said. "As it is I don't think I'll be able to heal this for at least a few hours."

-

"What do you think, Spark?" She whispered. Her Ghost had that funny way of reassuring her of injuries that sounded like a world-weary physician. Now he sat silent and motionless on the ground next to her. "Just a sprain, or a hairline fracture to the Lateral Malleolus?" She saw nothing obviously wrong with the ankle (besides the swelling), but it hurt a lot. "Best just to splint it, then?"

-

Azra shrugged and started re-binding the cut. The motions were weird in their familiarity. She'd never had to do first aid before, in this life at least. Luckily the wound wasn't too deep. Azra really hoped she wasn't going to get some weird Hive-infection from this. Normally Guardians couldn't get diseases, but normally Spark could heal her wounds. "The swords can jank a Ghost pretty bad, too," she continued. "From what I hear that's how Veikko lost his."