Destiny | The Blackened Heart | Discontinued

6: To Find a Warp Drive

Soaring through the night sky, I have the chance to ask the Ghost only a few questions.  About the Golden Age.  The time when the Traveler was alive and strong.  A protector of flourishing humanity.  

About the Fallen, their houses and hierarchy.  I have new terms for the Four arms and smalls.  Vandals and Dregs.  The drones are called Shanks.  The Captains lead crews of lesser Fallen, and Kells rule over their different houses.

Where Kells are political leaders, Archons are religious leaders. The Fallen need a substance called Ether to survive. The obtain this Ether through sentient machines called Servitors which they worship like gods. Archons serve as a link between these 'gods' and the Fallen. So priests basically. If that thing was just a priest, I don't think I want to meet a commander.

I didn't get much further with my questions, because the Ghost insisted that I should try flying. After getting over the fact that the only thing holding us thousands of feet in the air were my own two hands on a flimsy steering stick, it was rather enjoyable.

I did insist on the Ghost flying as we started our decent.

"There's so little left out here," he says as I peer out at the darkened landscape. "We're lucky to even find this ship. A guardian can't do much to protect the city without one. But it needs a warp drive if we ever hope to fight beyond Earth. And that Cosmodrome is the only place I know where we might still find one. We survived the Fallen once, we can do it again."

"'Course we can. Cayde and I have a deal. I live, and he teaches me. I plan to hold him to it."

The Ghost sets us down on a rocky knoll just inside the old Cosmodrome wall. It is dark here. Moonlight is the only light, beside the streaks of stars smudged across the canvas of the sky. The cold silver glow illuminates the snow, shining through the leaves of the scrawny birch trees that would dare to grow in such a place. Fallen banners, old bunkers and the rusted shells of cars dot the rolling landscape.

But it is the launch towers just behind the wall that catch my attention. My eyes follow them up and up and up. Tall, sharp spires with three large orbicular bulges like marshmallows impaled on a stick. If they were once space-worthy, they do not look it.

My gaze lingers beyond the ruined vessels, on the beautiful sky. The stars are magnificent. Vibrant without city lights to drown them out. Auroras of teal and emerald skip across the vast plane, undulating slowly like massive serpents. Beautiful.

"A Guardian ship was recently shot down here," the Ghost breaks in, jarring me from my thoughts as if he is trying to remind me of my mission. "If the Fallen haven't gotten to it, there might be parts we could salvage."

To visit those stars, those wild serpents. I drag my eyes to Earth and break into a rolling jog down the hill. With a second outcropping of rock ahead, I figure now is as good a time as ever to try out the masterfully named double jump.

I leap into the air, summoning my strength, and leap again. It is as though the air has gone solid beneath my feet. At least ten feet in the air, it feels like I'm flying! My laugh of triumph dies in my throat as my 'flight' comes to a crashing end against the rocky face of the knoll.

I roll to my feet again, winded, shaken, but wholly unbothered. I'm grinning like a banshee- sorry Banshee- from ear to ear.

"That could've gone better," the Ghost commented smartly.

I don't reply, for I'm already in the air again, leaping straight for a harried copse of birches then twisting and leaping to avoid them. This time I stick the landing, my boots sinking into the snow, dry grass whispering about my knees in the wind. I wonder if the wind could blow me off course.