Eyes Up, Guardian

Chapter 14

Tessa rose at dawn the next day, and dressed in her strongest armor, then slipped out of the hangar unnoticed. It wasn't necessarily a secret mission, it was just better if Damian didn't ask too many questions about where she was going. Cayde had caught her up on the situation yesterday. As it turned out, the Taken had a giant ship- a dreadnaught- in orbit around Saturn. The ship had a super weapon, a sort of energy blast that had destroyed the awoken queen's army in seconds. No one had heard from the queen after the battle.

Ikora wanted a warlock on the dreadnaught, Zavala wasn't so sure. Cayde told her he hadn't exactly shown his hand to the other vanguard leaders, but he'd hidden a stealth drive that could get them onto the dreadnaught. And, Cayde had heard Damian tell Ikora something about him getting some intelligence from an anonymous source.

So, Tessa's job was to find this stealth drive for Cayde. He would tell her where it was, of course, but she had to do all the heavy lifting. As usual.

"I don't think you ever met Crota, but a while ago some fireteam killed him, whatever, unimportant. The important part is, his father, Oryx, wants to kill you. We're not going to let that happen. Orxy controls the Taken from the dreadnaught near Saturn, but we can't get close without a stealth drive. Lucky for us, I hid one at the top of an old colony ship before I got roped into the vanguard."

"You say 'roped' as though you don't enjoy it." Tessa remarked, her tone a bit snide. Cayde would never admit it, but she suspected he liked his job, at least sometimes.

"How do you know it's still here?" Echo asked, skipping over her remark.

"You'd better hope it's there, 'cause we're going to need it."

"What was Ikora and Zavala's plan?" She asked.

"Zavala wants more information on the taken. He was planning to start with that cabal base you fought your way out of. He wants a fireteam to go through and see what's what. Even still, it's a dangerous plan, especially for him."

"And Ikora?"

"She heard Damian had a hunch to get some information from an unknown source, probably some Hive double agent, he won't say anything, though. She wants to send him off to do whatever it is he's talking about, then hopefully he'll bring back something that could get him onto the dreadnaught."

"So what you're saying is neither of them have a real plan?"

"Not so loud, guardian, but yes, which is why we need that stealth drive."

The ship slowed and Tessa peered outside, frowning down at the intense firefight below. She pulled on her helmet and double checked her armor, loading all her guns before Echo transmatted her outside. Looking at the fight was one thing, being in it was another.

She recognized the pull of taken energy before she saw them. Almost instantly, bullets were whizzing past her head. Echo had dropped her in the same courtyard where she'd killed the devil walker with Nina. Only now, there was blight consuming the entire place. With adequate firepower, it wasn't so hard to kill the taken, but there were so many of them, especially after so little time had passed since the attack on Phobos.

"What is that?" She wondered aloud as a taken figure formed a large spherical shield. It was perched on the top of the makeshift bridge in the middle of the courtyard, above the large divot in the ground. The perch gave it a good shot at the lower ground of the shallow pond below. Even from a distance, she could tell it looked like a vandal, and when the shield came down and it shot at her, the guess was almost guaranteed. She shot it down and it vanished, as the taken did, and she ran out from behind the cover of a half buried truck.