The Solar Terminus

1:1

"Five-hundred yards."

"Two ticks up."

"Wind is fifteen kilometers per hour due Nessus East"

"One tick left"

"Fire."

Releasing my breath, like Dyan instructed, I squeezed the five pound trigger like it was a force of habit, with the rifle firing, the explosive sound echoed through the trees, and nearly instantly the round met its target. A vex mind on the far side of the gorge, guarding a cave entrance.

The round tore through it, ripping every piece on its path through the exoskeleton. Fire spread through its insides before bursting through the exterior in an explosion of solar energy, sending it tumbling down into the pool of radiolaria below.

"Nice shot, you're getting good at this." Spitter congratulated.

"You're getting better at spotting." I replied, quickly standing up from my perch and grabbing her out of the air and jumping down from the Cliffside.

"You don't have to grab me you know! I can always dematerialize for a bit."

"I like the feel of your shape in my hand. What can I say?"

"Just be happy I didn't name you Grabby McGrabhands."

"Yeah, I think the one you have me is a bit nicer."

"Has a way better ring to it."

Sliding my way down a massive pile of loose dirt, I whipped out my sparrow to quickly travel the rest of the way there before jumping off of it at the entrance. The sparrow immediately deactivated, plummeting down into the Nessus soil at about sixty kilometers an hour, tumbling over itself before splashing into the same pool as the vex mind.

In the time it took for me to arrive at the cave's entrance, a few Vex reinforcements had arrived, just a handful of Goblins, nothing serious. One well-placed shot from my cannon was enough to down each of them in that satisfying explosion of milky radiolaria.

Holstering the cannon at my side, Spitter shook herself free from my offhand and began to float ahead of me, scanning the entrance to the cave and a few of the Vex corpses. "It won't be long until more vex show up to clean all this up. Let's get inside."

"Is this the right place?" I asked.

"I would have told you if it wasn't." she replied in a snap, flying back in my direction, disappearing into thin air before I could grab her.

The cave was a tight squeeze, only being five feet tall and maybe a couple feet wide, movement was certainly limited. There were a few vex camping out in holes, knelt down to fit in, protecting their milky cores at the same time. No matter, it was only one extra shot I had to make.

Eventually I made my way out to a large circular chasm, so perfectly round that it could only have been made by the vex. A thin walkway sloped its way down to the other end, where a large opening reached further into the system. Making my way around the side, I walked through that opening and drew my weapon. There was nothing around the corner, and Spitter wasn't picking up anything on my tracker so she rematerialized at my shoulder.

"Where are we exactly?" I asked, inspecting the architecture and investigating a few disabled vex gates.

"Seems like a vex hub of sorts. Let me consult the tower archives..." She didn't pause for long. "Yeah, this is a conjoining point for the local vex gates, sorta like a miniature prototype of the Infinite Forest."

"Ugh... don't remind me of the forest." I complained.

"What's wrong with the forest?" Spitter asked.

I sighed, jumping up to a higher vantage point to observe the entire room. "Well first of all, there's nothing I can do in the forest that Osiris and his projections haven't already done. He has the entire thing under control, especially after that Panoptes thing was destroyed.

"I miss Sagira, she was nice. Had a cool shell too."

"I swear, if you ask me for another..."

"When are you gonna buy me a new shell?" Spitter begged.

I ignored her highly repeated question and viewed my surroundings. This room was massive, I could count seven portals spread out in a circle from the center of the room, from the pillar from which I stood. Before long, the marble tower I was standing on collapsed from underneath my feet, revealing the holographic conflux within it.

"Damn vex and their illusionary crap!" I screamed, barely landing on my feet as the vex gates all activated. I quickly drew my cannon and threw Spitter at the conflux. "Scan, hurry!"

"On it!"

I defended Spitter for as long as I could, but vex kept pouring out of the gates, it was easy at first, goblins one at a time, but as my defense went on, beefier and beefier vex started pouring through hobgoblins and minotaurs storming through, all running straight towards the conflux at the center of the room.

"This is taking so much longer than I was expecting!" Spitter apologized. "There's so much data to siphon through, way more than I imagined, this network covers the entire solar system!"

"Spitter you're gonna have to hurry it up!" I screamed.

"There's no time! We need to get out of here!" She screamed.

"I can give you a little more time! Hold on!"

I shrugged off a slap rifle shot to my left arm and poured as much of my light into my limbs as I could, leaping into the air, I rained as much solar energy as I could muster down upon the room, incinerating every enemy it touched, it wasn't much, as the vex were still pouring into the room, but it bought me and Spitter another second.

I wished it was enough, but my cannon was running pretty low, even after I pulled out my machine gun from my back, they were still all coming through far too quickly. "It's not good enough!" I grunted, pulling Spitter away from the conflux and running back out of the room. The vex fired at my back, but I ducked and weaved and dodged my way out of their fire, leaping across the chasm I had shimmied my way across and just barely catching the lip on the other side. Pulling my way up, I ducked around a corner just in time to avoid a surge of void energy from the conflux.

It was a long way back up to the surface, through the low ceiling and back out the cave's entrance.

"We certainly stumbled into something down there." Spitter laughs.

I laughed as well, falling against a marble wall and catching my breath. "Yeah... that's gonna take a strike team."

"We'll have to run it past Zavala. He probably won't approve it for strike operations unless we figure out what danger this poses on the city."

I snarled. "You're right... Jeez I always hated that about him. 'I will not sanction aimless attacks on completely unknown vex technology all the way out on Nessus, guardian.'"

Spitter laughed. "Your impression is perfect. I'll run it past him on our next tower visit, but it wouldn't hurt grabbing a couple extra guardians to help us. It can always just be an unsanctioned op."

"Alright well... we came to the place Dyan mentioned, should we head back?"

Spitter floated around for a second. "We scouted the vex hub, we took out the guarding vex mind... we scanned the Exodus Black for whatever computers might be salvageable. I think we're ready to be back."

"Yeah, no success at finding the original crew log yet." I commented, stretching a bit while Spitter pinged with light to start transmatting us back to our jumpship.

"Don't worry. You'll find it eventually."