She hears the skiffs roll in, feels her shoulders tense, feels her stomach drop.
“The train will not have time to prepare,” it says. “The pilgrims are unarmed.”
She does not answer; swallows, but her throat is dry. The skiffs disappear behind a distant bluff. If she had not been scouting ahead, she would not have seen their arrival. She bites her lip.
“They will want what we have found,” says her Ghost. “There will be Walkers.”
She stands, clenches and unclenches aching fingers. Works her jaw. Unslings her rifle.
It is a blocky, ugly thing. Its barrel is hidden beneath webbing and plant-detritus, she has covered its battle scars with mottled paint so that the glint of metal does not give her away. She checks the sights, adjusts the scope. Her hands betray her and the barrel wavers. She growls in disgust. Coughs, once.
“They’re going to ambush us. Right around that bluff, there. They know it’s only me; and that means it’s like you said: kill us all, without hurting what we carry.”
“You’re going to do something stupid, aren’t you?”
“The Void comes for us all, Ghost. You can cower and wait, or you can run to meet it.”
She is not sure which of them she is trying to convince.
She re-loads the magazine. Wipes a speck of dust off the trigger guard. Closes her eyes and breathes in. Once, twice. She wonders if her Ghost can hear her heart.
"You have a great deal of faith in your Bow, Guardian.”
“Nope. Just a lot of faith in what needs to be done.”
“If they see us coming, we may meet the Void sooner than we’d like.”
She radios back. Tells the Pilgrims to wait, to hold, not to move until they hear from her again.
Then she makes the long walk across the plateau, towards the bluff, towards the skulking Fallen. She stares at the dirt as she goes, squeezes the rifle grip with both hands.
Her Ghost does not speak.
She moves quickly, darts between boulders and uses City-tech to cloak herself from the floating gun platforms that still hang just above the cliff’s edge.
She stops. Sits. Leans her head back against a boulder, rifle clutched to her chest.
Pokes her head out. Counts.
The Void comes for us all, she whispers.
Her eye is the rifle, and it is the agent of her will. Four coughs pierce the still, dry air. Four Vandals fall, and the magazine clicks, but their eyes are on her now and it is time to move.
She feels the pull of the void and lets herself go, steps through shadow before the Captains can react, buries three hungry rounds in a Devil’s helm, and the shadows embrace her again. She cannot be seen. She cannot be stopped.
They fall back, scramble for cover behind the rocky outcrops that dot the steppes. Their sights cannot find her. They scream with fear and rage.
She taunts them, always circling; finds the exposed head of a Dreg and removes it, picks them off one by one by one, feels each kick of the rifle deep in her chest, feels it echo through her bones; but when the Servitors drop she knows that it is time.
She leaves her cover, sprints across the exposed bluff. The Captains howl, and the Skiff tracks her with arc-fire, but the shadows protect her and there is nothing that can stop her now. A wire-crack echoes across the sky and she slides beneath a glowing bolt; she stows her rifle with a grace born of years of practice and the cliff’s edge beckons.
In the air, time slows, and the fear fades. Her hands move, unthinking. She imagines a Bow, and it is there; she pulls, and from the emptiness around her she draws an arrow of Light.
The LMG is set and sighted by the time she hits the dirt. The Fallen have recognized their mistake too late, and now the Tether holds them all. A single Baron raises its four swords in slow defiance, finds her with one furious, rolling eye.
The LMG thunders, and the Baron shakes; a leaf tossed in the waterfalls of the Cosmodrome. Fallen drop, purple tendrils sucking the Ether from their twisted bodies, and the Servitors are no more.
She skips behind a boulder, and the skiffs retreat. Silence. She pulls a bandolier with her teeth, stuffs a second mag into the LMG with shaking hands. Her knees feel weak.
Ozone crackles. More skiffs, overhead. One drops a Walker, and a warhead leaves a jumpship-sized hole in the cliff behind her.
The explosion knocks her flat and when she has found her breath again she snarls, pushes herself to her feet; hands steady now, dragging the LMG up through the dirt, slamming the magazine into place with a bloody fist. She tastes iron. One ear rings, and through the other she hears the whine of spooling Walker-fire.
Beneath her, the rifle barrel has bent in a fatal curve. Beside her, the Ghost is silent. Behind her, the Pilgrims wait for the road to clear.
The Void comes for us all, she says aloud, and she grins and runs to meet it.
