The Beginning Of Something Really Excellent
Though Guardians were never really considered off-duty, most of them took a day or two in the week off to pursue personal projects, do armor and weapon upkeep, or just rest their tired bones. There was no official shift system in place to make sure these days were never the same, but it seemed to work itself out naturally, so no one really bothered to change it.
Coma preferred to spend her rest days doing things, even if they were easy or somewhat meaningless things. She usually meticulously cleaned her gear, went for walks in the Tower, took a trip to the firing range, or spent time browsing the Cryptarchives.
It was in that particular location that she chosen to spend this particular day. She was currently occupying one of the many private rooms that the Cryptarchives offered, filled with plenty of display projectors and database browsers for the collected knowledge of what was left of humanity. They still had a print section, of course, but the books contained there were time-locked copies of incredibly ancient tomes - Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Beowulf, Epic of Sundiata, and many others. They had been long since fully digitized, but the Cryptarchs insisted on keeping the paper copies around anyway.
She was halfway through collating a series on the Fallen (and adding her own notes) when Keres unexpectedly walked in and took control of the main display. Coma blinked, the sudden shift in ownership jarring her into confusion, but she recovered quickly. “Wha- Keres! You can’t just...why?”
Keres didn’t reply, bringing whatever she’d brought with her up onto the main screen. The pictures of the Fallen dissolved and Coma was greeted with a somewhat familiar sight - a picture taken on the scorched sands of Mercury, long since abandoned by humanity. Formerly a garden world due to the Traveler’s influence, the planet was conquered by the Vex and turned into one giant machine - a machine that no one has been able to divine the purpose of.
“Mercury. Okay…?” Coma was busy squinting at the image, hoping that her friend would choose to enlighten her sooner rather than later.
Keres apparently decided on the former. “Giant machine, right? Vex conquered, long abandoned, but something’s off. We get readings from the planet periodically, signals sent off into space, they’re always the same - but not anymore.” She walked over to the display and indicated the vast stretch of desert, gesturing with a gloved hand. “This was taken a few years ago, and as you can see, empty. Hasn’t been anything in a few hundred years. But now?”
She flicked her hand at the terminal, and the image changed. The vista remained roughly the same, but now there was a massive floating structure in the sky - blocky, with disjointed parts and smaller bits floating around it. Coma instantly recognized it as Vex, and more than that, she’d seen it before. “Is...is that the Citadel?”
Keres nodded. “The signal we got was Earth in origin - one of our defense networks managed to get something out before it shut down, it’s being decoded now. I’ve got Zero set to send it when the Cryptarchs finish it, but we should go first before any other Guardians get ahold of it. We could be onto something big, Coma - this is the first non-Vex signal out of Mercury in centuries.”
With a nod of her own, Coma stood up, stretching. She sighed, then clapped her partner on the shoulder with a hand and a slight smile. “You just had to pick my day off, didn’t you?”
“Get your weapons and gear up. We’re leaving in ten minutes. If we’re lucky, Zero’s countermeasures to keep other Guardians from finding out will hold for that long,” Keres said as she was already stepping out of the room. Coma scrambled to keep up.
“Wow,” Coma said, the gravity of it all hitting her, “you’re...you really think this could change everything.”
Keres didn’t say anything immediately as she strode through the stacks, keeping her eyes ahead. “Something has to, Coma. We’re dead if nothing does, and like hell I’m going down without a fight.”